Live oak smell

For years I have been walking around my neighborhood. It's a two mile loop from my front door. In one particular place, there is a large live oak, the kind that has multiple trunks that have fallen over and kept growing up from there. A big green octopus. Every time I walk by it, I think I smell Mediterranean cooking from the house across the street.

Then one day several months ago, I was walking by another house with several huge live oaks. It was a clear day after many days of rain. It was so humid that algae was growing on the street under the tree. There was that smell. It had to be the tree.

We have a live oak in our yard but I've never smelled Mediterranean cooking near it. It's a younger tree than the others and doesn't have branches reaching the ground and the area around it is more open to the breeze. The humidity doesn't gather under it like it does under the older trees. Perhaps that accounts for it.