thought I was hallucinating the smell of violets, or getting ghost trails from Jolie Madame-infused clothing. But it’s the foxes.

Foxes have a scent gland on their tail; the supercaudal or violet gland releases volatile terpenes for social communication. You can see it as a black blotch where traces of the aromatic, waxy secretions have stained their fur. This smell of “march violets” was described as long ago as 1603, but researchers Stuart McLean, Noel W Davies, and David S Nichols ran gas chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis on the volatile compounds to get a better understanding of this scent chemistry. (Chemical Senses 44:3, pp.215–224, March 2019. DOI: 10.1093/chemse/bjz009.)

There are all sorts of terpenoids in that tail gland, from figgy β-cyclocitral to 3,3-Dimethyl-2,7-octanedione (which is in oolong and green tea) and sulcatone (which has a citrusy fruit odour). But, the most notable is the combination of alpha and beta ionones for the noticeable whiff of violets.

Maybe it’s more obvious in cubs because they are far less pungent than the adults (few things reek quite like a dog fox’s urine). Like all babies –if you can ignore the poo– they smell delightful. Granted, I have not had my nose buried in their fur, but when they are swarming around me in the sunshine, I can smell warm clean dogs who sleep in long drying grasses (plus great wafts of peanut breath when Feisty stands on the windowsill, chomping, inches from my face.) And when they play, or when their tails swish with excitement in anticipation of scraps of chicken, yes, flowers. Last night, in the still air after heavy rain as we sat in the open window with the fox cubs, the violet scent was cool, sweet, and distinct.

In the next month or so this wriggling tumble of cubs will start to smell as funky as a teenage boy’s bedroom. It’s inevitable. The violets will get masked by heavier musks, and deeper, oilier levels of all those “animalic” skin and fur and hair notes. But at the moment, they smell like a dab of vintage @rpparfums Bandit and a two sprays of @lush Kerbside Violet, while wearing a shirt that holds traces of @stclairscents First Cut.

originally posted 7 August 2019. This year (2025) I got to meet some of the grandcubs of this crew.