Botany

  • Botany,  Ingredients

    Plant Names – Books

    On my birthday I received Perfumed Botany by Jean-Claude Ellena and a book on Plant Words by Kew. I am looking forward to reading them. I also bought the book by Dominique Roques In Search of Perfumes, and the book Nose Dive by Harold McGee. I particularly like to look up words and Latin names – it is good to know for example, the Latin name for the garden privet, Ligustrum ovalifolium, was the inspiration for one of the names of the powerful, green scented raw material 2,4-dimethylcyclohex-3-ene-1-carbaldehyde (CAS no: 68039-49-6). The Summer of 2024 was particularly good for smelling the privet flower, too, which has a green and watery…

  • Botany

    Flowering Trees in Tenerife

    We have just returned from Tenerife where I discovered a number of new (to me) flowering trees. First, a stunning red blossomed tree with fern or frond-like leaves, on which the flowers look like a kind of red honeysuckle. In fact they are not related. This is the Delonix regia, flame tree or Royal Poinciana, a native of Madagascar but found in tropical and semi-tropical areas. It is a member of the bean family or Fabaceae so it will be related to tonka beans, sweet pea and acacia. Other trees that we noticed were a yellow blossom similar to the above which is an acacia. And two types of oleander,…

  • Botany,  Perfumery

    Forget-me-nots

    These pretty blue flowers don’t really have a scent although I have seen perfumes inspired by them or interpretations (a floral bouquet can be made with rose and jasmine notes, and a powdery background). Myosotis sylvatica is the Latin name for the garden or wood forget-me-not and they are part of the borage family Boraginaceae. Flowering during April and May you can see a beautiful sea of blue at ankle level. There is also Myosotis arvensis, the field forget-me-not, and the national flower of Alaska is Myosotis alpestris or the alpine forget-me-not. Myosotis scorpioides has an interesting name – this is the water forget-me-not also called “scorpion grass”. Sylvatica has…

  • Botany,  Ingredients,  Perfumery

    Rosa damascena trigintipetala

    The pink shrub roses used to make rose oil and rose absolute for perfumery are from two main varieties, the Centifolia rose, and the Damask rose, or Rosa damascena trigintipetala. These grow in Bulgaria, Turkey and Morocco, and I was lucky enough to visit the rose growing areas in El Kelaa des M’Gouna, Morocco, in 1997. There, the rose bushes are actually the side crop, used as hedges to assist and protect the wheat that is also being grown. The town of El Kelaa and nearby growing areas are part of a large oasis in the Sahara Desert. This week I had cause to look again at my journal from…

  • Botany,  Perfumery

    Cherry Blossom season

    I’ve been trying to decide if my favourite time of year is Spring or Autumn. I used to say Autumn definitely, with all the leaves changing colour. But the last few years we have had such amazing Spring blossoms. I am learning that they aren’t all cherry blossoms, although some of them are types of cherry tree. But there are also other types of Prunus, which would include plum blossom and almond, along with apple blossom. I have learned about the different types of cherry blossom as well, like the Kanzan cherry (Prunus serrulata) which is larger and grows in clusters, and the weeping cherry or “Snow Fountain” which has…