Floral Facts for Fragrances

There’s a popular saying that goes, “Stop and smell the flowers.” It usually means that you need to slow down a bit in your life and take time for simple pleasures … like smelling those proverbial flowers. Isn’t that the first thing you do when someone hands a bouquet to you or you are walking through a flower garden? It’s instinctive, something that we just do unconsciously. When buying flowers for yourself, many times the smell is what draws you to a purchase. That smell is what perfume manufacturers use to lure you to try and wear certain fragrances. In fact, flowers are an integral part in creating a fragrance.

Perfumes are derived from a variety of sources like fruits, bark, herbs, grasses, wood, resins, leather and even tobacco and chocolate. However, it is the flower that provides the foundation for many fragrances. Each flower offers a unique scent that can affect a perfume. In fact, even the same type of flower can elicit various aromas. For instance, roses often smell the same, but because there are hundreds of varieties of roses, each one will offer a scent that is slightly different from the next.

Flowers grow all over the world, so there are a lot of factors that play a part in creating a unique scent for your perfumes and fragrances. Soil acidity or alkalinity can alter a flower’s scent. The weather and environmental conditions like pollution and use of pesticides also contribute to a flower’s smell. Take the rose, for example. Roses grow all over the world, from France to the United States to Bulgaria, known for its corner of the market for rose production specifically for perfumes. For some flowers, they will not grow anywhere except in a small particular corner of the world. One example of this is the ylang-ylang flower. This delicate smelling flower only grows naturally in parts of Southeast Asia.

Manufacturers of fragrances have to isolate the essential oils from the flowers. These essential oils are what give plants and flowers their distinctive aromas. Numerous flowers are used in the production of perfumes and other fragrances. However, the most important flowers that provide the foundation to many fragrances are from the rose, jasmine and orange flowers. Also commonly used are ylang-ylang flowers.

Roses used in perfumes and fragrances date back to the Roman and Greek times and account for appearances in over seventy percent of all perfumes. Roses are rarely picked during the day; rather, they are harvested at night when their aromatic fragrance is at its strongest. The Damask Rose and the Rosa Centifolia are the two most popular roses cultivated for perfumes and fragrances.

Jasmine flowers are also picked at night time to preserve its peak aroma. And once jasmine flowers are picked, they must be processed and refined right away. Otherwise, their scent will fade from the picked blooms. Jasmine flowers are delicate, so great care is taken in the handling of the blooms. The precautions are needed because jasmine accounts for over seventy-five percent presence in the perfumes made today.

Parts of Europe and Africa account for most of the orange flowers used in perfumes and fragrances. Orange blossoms were once the popular flowers for weddings. The flower oil garnered from orange blossoms provides a fresh, clean, citrus-y scent that is quite refreshing to the senses. In fact, even orange trees have some beneficial things that can contribute to the fragrance market. Essential orange oils can be derived from the skin or peel of an orange. Even the leaves and bark can be harvested for some fragrance uses like cleaning products or linen sprays.

Finally, the exotic ylang-ylang flower found predominately in Southeast Asia is another popular flower used the production of perfumes and fragrances. The secret to the most aromatic ylang-ylang flowers is harvesting is waiting until the flower buds have been open for several weeks. And like the jasmine, the ylang-ylang flower must be processed and refined quickly before it loses aroma quality.

When choosing a fragrance for yourself, one way to make a good choice in perfumes is to determine which flower is your favorite. From there, you can do a little research into which perfumes use that flower and go “sniffing” around the department or fragrance stores in search of the right scent for you.

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