Green

Clementine Leaf

Note Profile

Botanical

About

Clementine Leaf is petitgrain clementinier, the steam-distilled foliage of the clementine tree. It is the petitgrain that stayed fruity. Both trade descriptions of it lead with fruity, not with green, which is the opposite order from bitter orange petitgrain and from lemon leaf. Under the fruit sit a zesty citrus, a leaf green, and an unusual fatty-aldehydic-honeyed tail that no other citrus leaf oil in this vocabulary carries.

Scent Profile

Fruity leads, and both trade descriptions put that word first. A zesty citrus sits right beside it rather than under it, thinner and more terpenic than the pressed peel because this is a leaf distillate. Green follows and is the crushed-twig character every petitgrain has, here in third place rather than first. Aldehydic gives the diffusive waxy lift both sources name. Honeyed is a soft sweetness in the tail and is named by both. Lactonic is the fatty facet, which both sources qualify as slight, so it sits under. A white_floral trace and a dry_woody trace are carried from the material's construction and its family, not from any quoted word, and both hold wide spreads because of that.

ScentWheel

Breadthmedium

EnvelopeHeart · ~6h lasting

Family Fruity, Fresh & Citrus, Green & Aromatic

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

Origin

Steam distillation of the twigs, leaves and a small quantity of flowers of Citrus clementina. The material is traded by name, mainly as a Corsican organic oil from Robertet. It is a leaf-and-twig oil, not a peel oil, so it shares no production route with the cold-pressed clementine fruit oil. Production is small and the material is sold as a speciality rather than a commodity petitgrain.

Usage in Perfumery

Use it where a petitgrain is wanted but the composition cannot take bitter orange leaf's sharp green. It gives a citrus-leaf structure with a fruit body already attached, so it bridges a peel-oil top into a green heart without a seam. The supplier text calls it a perfume in its own right rather than a simple aromatic material. Its stated tenacity means it holds past the point where the fruit oil has gone.