Osmanthus

Velvety and fruity like ripe apricot, with a floral, slightly leathery undertone.

Osmanthus fragrans is an evergreen shrub or small tree; its natural range extends from the Himalayas and Assam through China and South-East Asia to Taiwan and Japan. The small flowers grow in clusters and are white, pale yellow, golden yellow or orange depending on the cultivar. More than a hundred cultivars are grown in China, divided into four cultivar groups – the orange-flowered Aurantiacus group differs markedly from the yellowish-white groups. Osmanthus for perfumery comes mainly from China, where the shrub is widely cultivated, especially in the south, for example in the region around Guilin.

The delicate flowers are harvested in autumn. Extraction with a volatile solvent such as hexane produces a waxy concrete; washing with alcohol, chilling and filtering removes the waxes, and once the alcohol has evaporated the absolute remains. The yield is very low: a single kilogram of absolute requires a vast quantity of fresh flowers.

Osmanthus works above all in the heart of a fragrance: ionones give it a violet-like, powdery floralcy, while lactones such as γ-decalactone add the creamy apricot and peach tone. Linalool contributes a touch of bright freshness at the start. In our range, osmanthus appears in 46 fragrances, 38 in the heart, 7 in the top note and 2 in the base.

Floral · Fruity · Heart note

Osmanthus flowers in late summer and autumn, in China usually peaking from September to early October.

In our fragrances, it often appears alongside Vanille, Moschus, Bergamotte, Patschuli, Jasmin, Rose, Sandelholz.

In China osmanthus is closely linked to the Mid-Autumn Festival, which falls during its flowering season: according to an old legend, an osmanthus tree grows on the moon, which Wu Gang must cut down as a punishment – yet the tree grows back as fast as he fells it. For the festival, families traditionally drink osmanthus wine as a „reunion wine“ and eat pastries made with osmanthus flowers. The blossoms have also long been used in China to scent green or black tea. Several cities have osmanthus as their city flower, among them Hangzhou and Guilin, whose name is usually translated as „forest of osmanthus“.

• In one study, osmanthus showed the greatest diversity of scent compounds derived from carotenoids – that is, from flower pigments – of all the flowering plants investigated.
• Whether β-ionone smells floral or sour and pungent depends partly on a variant of the olfactory receptor gene OR5A1 – less sensitive people barely perceive the violet note.
• The character 桂 (guì) in the city name Guilin now refers to osmanthus; in older texts it was also associated with the cassia tree.

The scent of osmanthus is shaped by C₁₃ norisoprenoids, above all β-ionone (C₁₃H₂₀O, PubChem CID 638014) and α-ionone (C₁₃H₂₀O, CID 5282108), along with dihydro-β-ionone (C₁₃H₂₂O, CID 519382). These ionones are formed when the enzyme OfCCD1 – a carotenoid cleavage dioxygenase – cuts up carotenes in the petals; their emission follows a daily rhythm and is higher during the day. The flowers contain mainly α- and β-carotene, which also determine their yellow to orange colour. The fruity apricot tone comes from lactones such as γ-decalactone (C₁₀H₁₈O₂, CID 12813), while linalool (C₁₀H₁₈O, CID 6549) and its oxides add a fresh floral side.