Cyclamen

Fresh, delicate and airy-floral, with a green, slightly watery shimmer.

• The typical cyclamen scent in perfume comes from a molecule found in no cyclamen at all: cyclamen aldehyde is purely synthetic – the real flower smells only very faintly.

Because the flowers smell too faintly for extraction, cyclamen aldehyde is made in the lab: from 4-isopropylbenzaldehyde (cuminaldehyde) by aldol condensation followed by hydrogenation.