Anya's Garden Perfumes + The Natural Perfumery Institute

Trygve Harris of Enfleurage sent me a series of photographs of frankincense trees from different locales in Oman.  Very intriguing are the ones she calls "Old Lady" trees.  Below are some photos of them, and a photo of some recently-harvested resin from them. Here's what she wrote about these Old Lady trees:  These trees are over the hill from the first pictures I sent. It's still humid--still gets the mist in the summer, but less so. It's protected. These are the Old Lady trees. These ones are strong and fierce   From her first frankincense newsletter, sent on Feb. 22, 2012:  Fresh and oozy Mughsayl (Black) frankincense from the coastal mountains west of Salalah. This is my personal favorite. If you are distilling your own, this is probably your best choice.   It's got a rich snappy sparkle, and glittering pinenes with just a dash of orange.   It's the one I'm talking about when i talk about the Old Lady Trees. ...

More on the ongoing love and revelations about the frankincense trees of Oman.  All photos are by Trygve Harris of Enfleurage, who lives in Oman. In Trygve's words:  Here are some pictures--these trees are from a high humidity area by the sea. They get rain during the summer and there is lots of fog. But they are ridiculous creatures as you can see! White butterflies pollinate them. I had no idea until I caught the butterflies in the act. The flowering spires of the Boswellia sacra tree in Oman being pollinated by white butterflies. This is a beautiful artistic composition: the striated rocks, the gnarly branches of the Boswellia sacra and the finer-textured sand/rocks of the ground. Is this a double-trunked frankincense tree, or two trees? The flowers are emerging before the leaves on all the trees, I believe.  I vote this is a sprawling single tree. The ability of the frankincense tree to emerge in what looks like a barren, hostile environment is proba...

!!!Debunking alert!!! - Joking with all the exclamation points, including those in the title of this blog, but c'mon, what an overwrought, slightly incorrect article we're talking about.  In case you haven't heard, the perfumery media is buzzing with alarm over the doom and gloom article cited below. Who doesn't love Scientific American?  Well, they posted an "EXTINCTION ALERT" (my caps, as a salute to the tabloid-type hype they incurred a few days before Christmas) on frankincense that has the perfume world alarmed.  Repeating some rather scary stats from the Journal of Applied Ecology, everyone is now on edge that frankincense, the Biblical, historical iconic resin tree that has survived for thousands of years in some of the worst growing conditions on the plant, may only last another 50 years. I say baloney. The headline "Bad News for Christmas: Frankincense Future Uncertain" only adds to the sensationalist nature of this article, in a suppo...

Gardenia flower When I was in school studying Economic Botany, (scroll down) I reveled in tales of the Plant Hunters. These were adventurous botanists who traveled to remote regions looking for plants that would be useful to us. Many focused on medicinal plants, but I was obsessed with fragrant plants - of course! I never did become a Plant Hunter, and was a bit disheartened to learn that for the past decade or so, the Plant Hunters tend to be governed by the headspace machine, which although it captures the scent of the flower, results ultimately in a recreation of the scent with synthetic chemicals. Headspace proponents argue that by doing so, they are ultimately protecting the plant because there is no need to harvest it. Well, I like my essences natural and I like them renewable, and I especially like the idea that there are still Plant Hunters like Trygve Harris of Enfleurage in New York and other entrepreneural souls who strive to establish new plantations and grassroots indust...