Easter Lily

Note Profile

Botanical

About

Easter lily is a clear white floral, sweet and fresh, with a transparency that keeps it light. It is the gentle end of the lily range, not the narcotic end.

Scent Profile

White_floral leads because the one source that names this flower calls it 'one of the most approachable white florals in perfumery' and places lily in the white-floral family alongside jasmine, tuberose and gardenia. It is held below the 0.85 of lily-of-the-valley and white ginger lily because the same source's whole point is that this one is the transparent member of the group. Floral is the general petal body under it. Green is the trumpet's stem and green throat. It is carried across from the source's account of the genus as faintly green rather than from anything said about this species, which is why its spread matches the lead's. Sweet_vanillic is the 'sweet' half of 'sweet and fresh', at the bottom of the naming range because that single word is all the source gives. Below: aquatic_ozonic and cooling_mentholic are the 'fresh' half and the 'transparency', both held at trace because no source says watery or dewy about Lilium longiflorum in particular. Powdery is the soft finish that white lily reconstructions share. Honeyed, clean_musk, lactonic and mineral are trace values for the waxy petal and cool stem, carried from the neighbouring published lily notes rather than from evidence about this one.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeHeart · ~5h lasting

Family Floral

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

Origin

Easter lily is Lilium longiflorum, the white trumpet lily used at Easter. Wikipedia describes the plant only as bearing flowers that are 'trumpet-shaped, white, fragrant, and outward-facing', with no account of the smell. There is no natural extract. White lily is a mute flower that survives neither steam distillation nor enfleurage, so an Easter lily note in a finished perfume is built from aroma chemicals. One source found in this research names the flower specifically rather than lily in general, and it is a perfumery blog.

Usage in Perfumery

A heart floral for the lighter kind of white bouquet, and for Easter and wedding themes where the flower is the reference. Its one source positions it by restraint: a white-floral presence 'that illuminates rather than overwhelms, that adds elegance rather than drama'.