Christmas Rose

Note Profile

Botanical

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About

Christmas Rose is Helleborus niger, a winter-flowering perennial in the buttercup family. It is not a rose and not in the rose family, despite the name. No horticultural source consulted attributes any scent to the plant at all. The note as perfumers use it is a construction around the idea of a poisonous white winter flower, and the two commercial treatments found do not agree on what that smells like.

Scent Profile

Christmas Rose is built around the idea of a poisonous white winter flower, not a scent read from the real plant. It reads as a white floral bouquet, close to magnolia and lily, with a cool, camphor-like edge. A fresh, herbaceous green runs through it, and a faint musky warmth sits underneath, giving it a quiet, wintry floral character.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeHeart · ~5h lasting

Family Floral

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

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ScentArt

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Origin

Botanical name, thematic note. Helleborus niger, Ranunculaceae, native to the Alps and the northern Apennines, flowering from midwinter to early spring. No supplier lists a Helleborus niger absolute, extract or oil. Nothing here is distilled from the plant.

Usage in Perfumery

Six Parfumo placements across four brands, plus 38 under the German 'Christrose'. Parfumo files it under floral notes. Two brands were readable. Erbaflor's 'The Christmas Rose' builds it as magnolia, lily and lily-of-the-valley over green tea and a musky base. Ingrid Starnes' 'Hellebore' builds it from camphor for an 'unsettling beguiling floral'.