…in our street, at least, the pervasive “warm, buttered, milky spuds” aroma almost certainly has nothing to do with potatoes.
Melaleuca quinquenervia is the “culprit” – flowering, not mashing.
This species is one of many melaleucas, commonly known as paperbarks.
Melaleuca quinquenervia is a common street tree in Perth; like many of the local humans, it is an “eastern stater” that has found “the West” very much to its liking.
Its transition from “flowering has started” to “full bloom” is very dramatic.
One morning I look across the road, and the tree pictured in this post has mostly-green foliage, flecked with white.
The very next day, it looks as if a flying bale of cotton had rained down a blizzard.
A closer view offers something quite different…
(the “who just set up a potato processing factory in our street?” aroma becomes apparent when the tree bursts into full bloom, and then intensifies over the next several days, as the blooms become less neat/more bedraggled. No other tree that I know produces this particular scent)