Ethyl vanillin glucoside is one of the many many checmial additives which may be found in conventional cigarettes. Specifically those cigarettes which are manufactured by RJ Reynolds, the company which holds the patent for ethyl vanillin glucoside.

Unlike some chemicals which are added into to make the cigarettes more addictive, this one is put into the papers to make the smoke not smell like ass. How effective that aim is is wholly dependent upon one's tolerance for smoke.

A 1990 summary of studies by RJ Reynolds concluded that this chemical is mostly harmless in small doses, although it does admit that the average consumption exceeds the safety threshhold just a tad—albeit nomoreso than any other chemical additives in cigarettes. At most humans, will exhibit minor eye irritation from ethyl vanillin glucoside; no genetic toxicity was found. Each cigarrette's paper contains  270 µg of ethyl vanillin glucoside, or about (between 0.6% and 0.8% of the total paper's weight).

The chemical composition of ethyl vanillin glucoside is a one to one covalent bond between ethyl vanillin and glucose. The ethyl vanillin is released as a vapor as the cigarette burns the glucose into ash.

Good smells exude from crumpled earth.
The rough bark of humus erupts
knots of potatoes (a clean birth)
whose solid feel, whose wet inside
promises taste of ground and root.

Seamus Heaney
From "At a Potato Digging"
Death of a Naturalist

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January thaw. The earth softens a bit under a soft rain. You wander outside, trying to shake off the heaviness of winter, to smell the awakening earth.

The mud disappoints your nose. Inert. Lifeless.

You wander back inside, dreaming of May.

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Actinomycetes is a class of organisms essential to making good dirt. They are what give compost the sweet, earthy smell that makes gardeners wild with desire.

Actinomycetes give us the smell of rain in the summer. Storms breathe life. Poets and lovers already know this. Leave it to the microbiologists to tell us why.

Actinomycetes form grey strands in rotting piles of vegetation, like strands of fungus. Indeed, these critters were originally classified as fungus, though now are considered a form of bacteria.

Actinomycetes love chitin, cellulose,and lignin, breaking down materials other microorganisms cannot digest. In the process they produce geosmin (trans-1,10-dimethyl-trans-9-decalol), a compound described as smelling like freshly tilled earth. The smell, considered pleasant by (most) humans, has been added to some perfumes to give them an earthiness. (Geosmin, however, has also been blamed for the mustiness occasional found in wine and drinking water.)

Besides adding romance to summer showers, actinomycetes has antibacterial properties. Streptomycin and related antibiotics come directly from actinomycetes; Biaxin and Zithromax are semi-synthetic antibiotics made from this same class of bacteria.

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So why does mud smell lifeless in January? Actinomycetes goes dormant in colder climes. While it is possible to grow actinomycetes in a petri dish (and yes, it will smell like the rich, sweet soil that makes gardeners swoon), waiting for the Earth to awaken reminds us of the cycle of life.

"Hop-picking in the old days was hard work, a hard time. Hops are nettlesome plants, and a sticky substance called lupulin lies in the bottom of the hop cones. Pickers have to wear full monkey suits, with long sleeves and buttoned-up collars, which back then were made of wool. But as hard as they worked, they played hard, too. The stories we heard at our harvest were something, I tell you."

Tim Wallace, "Hip Hops"^*

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This week I started picking my hops. Teetering on a ladder, sweltering under a humid and hazy August afternoon, I plucked the papery cones, filling bag after bag with beer flowers. I did not wear a full monkey suit. I dawdled as I picked--my family does not depend on my hops to feed them. My arms get scratched up a bit, but my skin does not react.

Hops grow on "bines." If you are feeling hoity-toity, you can make a big deal about this, correcting someone when they call those twisting green plants climbing up twine 25 feet towards the sky vines. "Ba-bine, not va-vine..." What's a bine? I think it's a vine that grows hops. Wha-whatever.

Comma butterflies love hops. They flit among the leaves and flowers, often settling just to rest. Today my hands were sticky with lupulin rosin. It was hot today, so I occasionally wiped my face with my hand. A comma butterfly found me irresistible, flapping inches from my eyes, landing on my face, then my arm. Usually a little twitch frightens them away. Not today. I must have smelled really good. Or maybe the critter was high on lupulin (hops are related to cannabis).

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In days of old, farmers cut the hop plants, lay them on the ground, and workers (often women and children) picked all the flowers at one time. Since the flowers do not all mature at the same time, perfectly ripe hops were mixed with less than and overly ripe flowers. Cutting the bines down before the end of the season was hard on the plants. Efficiency has a price.

Today, commercial hops are harvested by machines--very expensive machines. The equipment to harvest and dry hop cones runs a couple million dollars. I have one rhizome in my backyard which puts out a dozen or so bines. Ba-ba-ba-bines. I rent myself out for a lot less than the machines. Besides, I enjoy the work.

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Synesthesia. A hop flower is ready to pick when it has a certain color, somewhat lighter green than its younger self, sometimes with the edges of the bracts just starting to turn brown.

It has a certain feel, a springiness--you squeeze it, it bounces back.

The peak ripe flowers smell like fresh beery bongwater.

After picking a few thousand hops, the color and the smell and the feel merge into one. If I see the right color, my fingers tingle with the papery feeling without touching the plant. If I smell a ripe hop cone with my eyes closed, I see the lime green color. Not quite the same as synesthesia. More like embedded memories.

Stay with the same lover long enough and sensations get deliciously mixed up. Or maybe after a quarter century together, we are both just getting old, and our senses lose their edges a bit, images blur, sounds muffle. One sense helps another. Getting older has some advantages; it helps if you sensed your mortality decades earlier, before the senses start to fuse together. Lessens the fear.

Still, reading about it won't make it happen. Picking thousands upon thousands of hop cones will. Wrapping your fingers around any plant for hours at a time, harvesting for the winter, will give plants a veracity you might not feel otherwise. Dirt, air, sunlight, water. Work. Good work. Productive work. I have pounds of hops drying in the attic. By Christmas, I'll have gallons of ale flavored by the same hops, and I will share it with the love of my life.

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^*from the January 30-February 5, 1997 issue of the Sonoma County Independent http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/01.30.97/brewery-9705.html