Centella Asiatica

Note Profile

Botanical

About

Centella asiatica is the low-growing tropical herb sold to skincare as gotu kola. In perfumery it reads as a quiet green herb: crushed foliage, humid and astringent, with a mineral edge and a faint musky warmth behind it. It is not sweet and it is not floral. Three perfumes list it and Fragrantica files it under greens, herbs and fougeres.

Scent Profile

Green leads, and it is the crushed-leaf kind: humid, vegetal, astringent, the smell of a low herb bruised between the fingers. Aromatic_herbal is the body under it, the same sesquiterpene family (caryophyllene, farnesene, humulene) that gives most herbaceous plant oils their dry savoury weight. Mineral carries what the trade source calls metallic, a cool wet-stone edge it names twice. Earthy is its own phrase, close to earth. Dry_woody is scored from chemistry rather than from prose: an oil that is four-fifths sesquiterpene hydrocarbons has a woody-peppery underside whether or not anyone wrote the word down. Clean_musk sits below because faintly musky is stated but qualified as faint each time it appears.

ScentWheel

Breadthmedium

EnvelopeHeart · ~6h lasting

Family Green & Aromatic

Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.

Origin

The plant is grown and processed for its wound-healing triterpenes, asiaticoside and madecassoside, not for its smell. No fragrance-industry supplier selling a dedicated Centella asiatica perfumery material was found. Hydro-distillation of the fresh herb yields a minor pale-yellow essential oil at about 0.04 to 0.05 per cent, used locally in traditional medicine. A 2013 study of Nepalese material found that oil to be 70 to 82 per cent sesquiterpene hydrocarbons, led by the two caryophyllene isomers, beta-farnesene and alpha-humulene, with monoterpenoids under 2.5 per cent.

Usage in Perfumery

Used as a green herbal accent rather than a structural note. Its interest to a brief is usually the plant's skincare reputation as much as its odour, so it appears in fresh green and fougere compositions where a damp, mineral, low-to-the-ground herb is wanted. It has no sweetness or floral lift to contribute and will not carry a heart on its own.