Terpene Library

Crack black peppercorns and lean over the grinder — that hot, dry bite in your nose is caryophyllene. It's in cloves, cinnamon, oregano and basil: the spice-rack terpene. In cannabis it's why some strains smell less like fruit and more like something cooking.

Linalool is lavender. Not like lavender — it's the same molecule, which is why a linalool-heavy strain can smell like a drawer sachet or a bar of expensive soap. Mint, coriander and cinnamon carry it too, but it's the lavender people recognise.

Nerolidol is bark and blossom at the same time. It's in neroli — orange blossom — as well as jasmine, ginger and lemongrass, and it smells like fresh-cut wood with something floral behind it. In cannabis it usually works as a background note, giving depth rather than character.

Terpineol is lilac and lime blossom — sweet, floral, faintly soapy in the way good soap is soapy. It's also in pine and eucalyptus, which is strange company for a flower note, and it's part of why some pine-forward strains have an unexpected sweetness underneath.

You've met limonene every time you've torn the peel off an orange. That bright oil that sprays into the air is mostly this, and it's the second most common terpene in nature — lemon, lime, grapefruit, juniper all carry it. In cannabis it's the one that makes a jar smell scrubbed clean rather than earthy.

Terpinolene is the hard one to pin down, because it doesn't smell like a single thing. There's apple in it, and lilac, and something sharper underneath closer to nutmeg or cumin. It's the terpene that makes a strain smell complicated rather than simply fruity or piney.