The leaves of the lentisco plant are beautifully scented when you break them. The first thing that dominates are fresh, green woodsy notes, not unlike galbanum; an important ingredient in perfumery (and another “favorite”) that has similar intense green and woodsy notes.
Upcycled ingredients are among the more recent trends to emerge in modern perfumery creation. To reuse an otherwise discarded material to extract essential oils is technology at its best and a welcomed manufacturing practice for the environment.
Winter season scents. Fresh and clean. A perfect way to describe one of our most loved evergreens, Juniper (Juniperus Communis). This tall shrub produces wonderful essential oils from its needles and branches as well as its cones (aka, “berries”).
Nespole’s white flower clusters are bewitching. They form the pinnacle of large, pointed, leathery leaves. The underside of which have a red-brown fuzz that makes the leaves look dusty. The flowers’ spicy (nutmeg, clove, allspice) scent has a complementary sweet, heady, carnal facet. It’s part of the rose family so maybe it’s the indole that adds an animalic quality and subconsciously seductive?
Flowering ivy (hedera helix) reawakens our nose with its sweet scent. The common ivy plants that we walk by without noticing (or appreciating) fill the air with an intoxicating fragrance. Honey! Rich, velvety honey like something you’d expect to find from a more showy flower in the early summer. Creeping on the shoulders of its hosts, the quiet, pervasive ivy is all around you.
Figs have long held an esteemed position in Italian culture representing fertility, peace and prosperity. The distinct scent of the fresh, green leaves and ripened fruit makes it one of the most identifiable and replicated in the fragrance world, and one that we’re equally drawn too.
Among the many wild brush in the salt-air licked hills of Tuscany is this wonderfully fragrant one: Artemisia Maritima. It is a native species of wormwood, also known as sea wormwood. Although the name isn’t very flattering the fragrance is a multi-faceted treat.
Welcome to Summer: Genista. From spring to early summer these flamboyant shrubs paint the Mediterranean hillsides in swaths of bright yellow color and perfume the air with intense honey and vanilla notes like scented wands.
The appreciation of this plant, in all its parts, is not news. Since ancient times myrtle has been used, especially the leaves and fruit, for everything in the kitchen from seasoning meats and wrapping fresh mozzarella, to making liquors and for natural botanical remedies to treat respiratory ailments or skin treatments. But let’s talk about the scent.
Taking a little break from the long list of florals that are making our heads swirl to give the proper call out to one of the fragrance industry’s biggest players: Lemon leaves. Yes, just the leaves for now because they tell an important part of the scent story.
