Petrichor

"Smell of rain" redirects here. For the Mortiis album, see The Smell of Rain.

Petrichor ( /ˈpɛtrɨkər/) is the scent of rain on dry earth. The word is constructed from Greek, petra, meaning stone + ichor, the fluid that flows in the veins of the gods in Greek mythology.

The term was coined in 1964 by two Australian researchers, Bear and Thomas, for an article in the journal Nature. In the article, the authors describe how the smell derives from an oil exuded by certain plants during dry periods, whereupon it is absorbed by clay-based soils and rocks. During rain, the oil is released into the air along with another compound, geosmin, producing the distinctive scent. In a follow-up paper, Bear and Thomas (1965) showed that the oil retards seed germination and early plant growth.

See also

• Geosmin

In popular culture

• In the Discworld novel The Last Continent, there are frequent references to the Ecksian people (analogous to Australian Aborigines) being the only culture on the Disc to have a word meaning "that smell you get after rain".
• Neil Gaiman frequently refers to the scent of earth after rain in his novel American Gods.
• The word was featured in the Doctor Who episode "The Doctor's Wife" (written by Neil Gaiman), as part of a telepathic password to enter one of the TARDIS' old control rooms. To use it, Amy Pond had to imagine the smell of dust after rain. In "Closing Time" (written by Gareth Roberts), Amy is seen on an advertisement for a perfume with the same name; it shows a picture of her face and features a bottle of perfume and the phrase "Petrichor - For the girl who's tired of waiting".
• In Barton Bishop's play Still the River Runs, brothers Jesse and Wyatt discuss the distinctive aroma that Wyatt identifies as petrichor.

External links

• Petrichor — at "A Word a Day"
• From the Oxford English Dictionary