Common Marshmallow

Note Profile

Botanical

About

The Althaea officinalis plant, which is nearly odourless: faint green leaf over a starchy, earthy dried root.

Scent Profile

Every value here is low, and that is the finding, not a gap. Green leads, because the one thing two sources agree on is a green reading: 'faint green, vaguely herbaceous' from the crushed fresh leaf, and 'a green, earthy aroma' from the root. Earthy is the second half of that same phrase and the damp-root floor under it. Powdery is the starch: Premiere Peau calls the dried root 'starchy, tea-like... closer to wet cardboard than to confectionery', and dry starch is what that reads as. Under those sit a faint aromatic_herbal tone, a dried tobacco_hay tea-leaf edge, and a small mineral dryness for the cardboard. Sweet_vanillic is held rather than zero only because a brand naming this term may be reaching for the confection, not because any source found sweetness in the plant.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeHeart · ~5h lasting

Family Green & Aromatic

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

Origin

Common marshmallow is Althaea officinalis, a mallow of European wet ground. It is the plant that gave the confection its name, because its root mucilage was the original thickener. It is not the source of the confection's smell and never has been. The traded organ is the dried root. Premiere Peau reports the profile is dominated by scentless alkanes such as tetradecane, hexadecane and dodecane, and states plainly that 'the actual plant smells of almost nothing'. There is no commercial Althaea absolute or essential oil. The term is attested in 6 Parfumo entries across 5 brands.

Usage in Perfumery

A texture and idea note rather than an odour note. Brands name it for the soft, mucilaginous, herbal-tea association it carries, and the smell in the bottle has to come from the materials placed around it. Treat any strong sweet reading of this term as the confection accord instead, which is the published `marshmallow` note.