Guayacan

Note Profile

Botanical

About

Guayacan is a floral note with almost no published smell behind it. One botanical source says the flowers 'emiten un aroma agradable' - they give off a pleasant aroma. That is the whole of the olfactive record I could reach. Three horticultural sources agree the flowers are blue to lilac and nectar-rich, and Fragrantica files the note under Flowers across 3 placements, so the note is the flower rather than the wood. The vector says that and nothing more: floral leads, everything else is held at or near zero with a spread of 0.25, which in this data means unknown rather than absent.

Scent Profile

Floral is the only facet with support, and the support is thin. RENATURA Sonora says the flowers 'emiten un aroma agradable', which fixes that the flower is scented and pleasant but names no family. Fragrantica's own group for the note is Flowers, which is the second and last independent signal. 0.55 is deliberately short of the 0.62 that laburnum carries and well short of a real absolute, because 'pleasant' is a judgement and not a description. Below nothing is asserted. Honeyed comes from Spadefoot Nursery's 'nectar rich flowers' and Mountain States describing a bee-pollinated bloom. That is a pollination fact, not a smell claim, so it is held at a sixth of the strength labdanum's honeyed carries and its spread is wider than its value. Green and sweet_vanillic are hedges on a fresh living flower, not readings from any source. White_floral is held low because a blue-lilac desert flower is not the fleshy indolic shape that facet names. Every other facet is 0.0 with a spread of 0.25. Read those as unmeasured. No source states their absence and neither do I.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeHeart · ~4h lasting

Family Floral

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

Origin

Guaiacum coulteri, family Zygophyllaceae, a small tree of the dry forests of western Mexico and Guatemala. Its blue or lilac five-petalled flowers open from April to September when moisture allows. No supplier advertises an essential oil or absolute of this species, and no chemical-ecology paper reports its floral headspace, so what perfumery calls guayacan is a reconstruction rather than an extraction. The name is a trap in two directions. Guaiac wood in perfumery comes from Bulnesia sarmientoi, a different genus, so this is not the published guaiac-wood note. 'Guayacan' is also the Spanish common name for the yellow-flowered trumpet trees Handroanthus and Tabebuia in Ecuador and Colombia, which is a different plant again.

Usage in Perfumery

3 Fragrantica placements, none on Parfumo. Fragrantica files it under Flowers. Use it as a heart note where a light, unfamiliar floral is wanted. There is no supplier material to buy, so any use is a reconstruction built from other floral bases.