Every spring I visit an “old friend” at Kubota Garden in Seattle: a stately Chinese plum tree. If I sit against its large trunk, I’m completely hidden from view by its flower-covered branches that touch the ground. The scent of the thousands of white plum blossoms changes over time. The tiny round unopened buds smell fresh and leafy with a whiff of rain. At their peak, the flowers diffuse a strange and lavish perfume with hints of honey, clove, old-fashioned bubblegum, wood smoke and masa. As the flowers fade and begin to fall, their last breath smells of delicate incense.
It is this final stage of the plum flower’s existence that is evoked by Shoyeido’s Baika-ju (Plum Blossoms) Incense…