Fir
Cool, green pine needles, resinous sap and the dry scent of a forest tree.
You may know it from a freshly cut Christmas tree
Where it comes from
Steam-distilled oils come from fir needles and twigs; similar scents are also made synthetically.
Botanical name: Abies
Worth knowing
Fir is not the same tree as pine, though their scents overlap.
About fir
Fir is a genus of conifers, Abies, in the pine family, with roughly 48 to 65 species. A fir is told from its relatives by the needles, which attach singly to the branch on a circular base, and by cones that stand upright on the branches like candles. The bark of many firs carries resin blisters, and on balsam fir they tend to spray when ruptured.
The oil used in perfumery is distilled from the needles. Silver fir, native to the mountains of Europe from the Pyrenees to the Alps and Carpathians, gives a resinous, pine-scented oil that goes into perfumes, bath products and inhalants. Siberian fir, a tree that survives temperatures down to -50 °C, has leaf oil that is also used in perfumes. The yield is modest: in one lab study, hydrodistillation of subalpine fir needles gave a colourless oil at about 1.6 to 1.9 percent of the fresh plant mass.
Chemically these oils are mostly monoterpene hydrocarbons such as alpha-pinene, camphene, beta-pinene and limonene. Bornyl acetate varies more from species to species. In a comparison of seven firs, Siberian fir stood out at about 31 percent, and the molecule is described as smelling woody, pine, herbal, camphoraceous and mentholic. How the oil is taken from the needles matters too. Supercritical CO2 extraction of Siberian fir produced a chemically distinct profile, enriched in bornyl acetate at 40.0 percent.
Many people meet fir as a Christmas tree. Silver fir is reported as the first species used for that, later largely replaced by Nordmann fir and Norway spruce. Firs remain the most commonly used trees because they do not shed their needles when they dry out.
Accords it shows up in
How many of the fragrances listing Fir in our catalogue also carry each accord. We counted this ourselves.
Often paired with
The notes that appear next to Fir most often in our catalogue.
Well-known fragrances with Fir
Fragrances that list it in their notes, most-rated first.
Houses that use it most
Ranked by how many of their well-known fragrances list Fir.