When my daughter was born, I would place tiny dots of sandalwood oil behind her perfect little ears and in the folds of her delicate neck. She was the best smelling baby around; the combination of the natural scent of infant and sandalwood was heady, divine, something you could live in forever. It’s an unusual thing, to perfume babies, something that runs counter to today’s heightened wariness of unnecessary exposure to chemicals (though the perfume oil I used was natural, with no additives or preservatives).

— Read more in Perfuming my daughter: The scent of sandalwood was a way to connect with my culture and home— I followed its roots to learn more at This.

But scientists investigating a chemical that smells like sandalwood have discovered the woody, floral “odorant” can stimulate hair growth. They published their findings in the journal Nature Communications.

“This is actually a rather amazing finding,” Ralf Paus, research leader and a scientist at the University of Manchester, told The Independent. “This is the first time ever that it has been shown that the remodeling of a normal human mini-organ [a hair] can be regulated by a simple, cosmetically widely-used odorant.”

— Read more at Battling Baldness With Sandalwood: Synthetic Scent Stimulates Hair Growth at Newsweek.