Anya's Garden Perfumes + The Natural Perfumery Institute

  A Banana-scented flower for Delight by  Anya McCoy  |  May 11, 2014  |  Anya's Garden Perfumes ,  natural perfumery course ,  raw materials of perfumery ,  study perfumery  |  0 comments Michelia figo – banana-scented flowers A BANANA-scented flower! The Michelias are a beautiful group of magnolias. Of course, there’s the M. champaca, with glorious golden/orange fragrant flowers, known as the Joy Perfume tree, and M. alba, whose white flowers smell of fruit and sweetness, and I also love M. figo, with smaller, banana-scented flowers! I had this beauty transplanted from a spot in the front garden where it wasn’t thriving. It’s been in my back garden “plant hospital” for several months and is now blooming like crazy. Lots of fun! I don’t tincture this one, because I use tinctured freeze-dried bananas for that purpose. Don’t you just love it? You can grow this in a big pot, Northerners, and move it indoors in the winter. All sorts of...

 Originally published July 28, 2013 I was digging up some old photos for a writing project, and this one of Jasmine sambac Grand Duke of Tuscany is from 2005.  I used a thumbnail of it on the original naturalperfumery.com website that was launched that year.  The thumbnail is an ironic term here since it features my thumbnail!  What huge flowers from the Grand Duke!  Many are the size of small carnations, which they remind people of, due to their tightly-clustered petals.  The window to harvest this flower is small since they’re slow to ripen to the proper stage for harvesting, and then, boom, overnight, it seems, they start to turn brown. A gorgeous, intensely-fragrant slow-growing jasmine. So many of the white flowers produce an orangey-brown absolute or tincture, have you noticed that?  Jasmines and gardenias, Michelia, and lotus come to mind.  When I pop Michelia alba flowers into a tincture, the menstruum turns reddish-brown immediately!...