Terpene Library

Bisabolol is chamomile — the tea, and the smell of it steeping. It comes from only two notable sources, chamomile and the Brazilian candeia tree, which makes it the most narrowly sourced terpene we list. In cannabis it's soft, sweet and faintly floral, and easy to miss under louder company.

Geraniol is rose. It's the molecule behind rose oil and geranium, it's what citronella candles are built on, and it's the sweet note in some pipe tobaccos. In cannabis it's rare and immediately recognisable: a jar that smells faintly of a flower shop.

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.

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.

Ocimene is the sweet, almost tropical note in mint, basil and parsley — and in orchids, which is the tell. It's a smell plants make to be attractive. In cannabis it reads sweet and green at once, sitting on top of a profile rather than underneath it.

Valencene is named after the Valencia orange, and that is exactly what it smells like — sweet orange, not the sharp lemon of limonene. Tangerines and grapefruit carry it too. In a jar it's the difference between citrus that smells like fruit and citrus that smells like cleaning product.