Hoya Carnosa Wax Plant

Note Profile

Botanical 1 perfume

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About

Hoya carnosa is the wax plant or porcelain flower. It smells of honey at night. The flowers are pale, star-shaped and waxy, they open in the evening and they run with nectar. There is no extract. What perfumery calls hoya is a reconstruction, and the two sources found disagree about what the sweetness resembles - one says honey-floral, the other says chocolate.

Scent Profile

Hoya Carnosa smells of honey dripping from pale, star-shaped flowers at night, sweet and faintly nocturnal. A white floral body sits under the honey, close to gardenia or tuberose but not as heavy. A waxy quality runs through the petals themselves, and a soft tropical darkness sits in the background. Some describe the sweetness as closer to chocolate than to honey.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeHeart · ~7h lasting

Family Sweet & Gourmand, Floral

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

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Origin

Hoya carnosa (Apocynaceae) is a tropical Asian climbing succulent. Garden Betty describes the flowers as 'soft pink and star-shaped, covered in a very fine layer of fuzz', producing 'so much nectar that you can sometimes see drops oozing and falling from the flower cores'. Scent and nectar are both strongest at night, which attracts moths - Garden Betty cites Altenburger and Matile, 'Circadian rhythmicity of fragrance emission in flowers of Hoya carnosa', Planta 174(2), 1988. Premiere Peau states plainly that the plant 'yields nothing to commercial extraction' and that the perfumery note is 'a conceptual reconstruction' built from honey absolute or phenylacetic acid esters, hydroxycitronellal for a muguet lift, methyl benzoate for white-floral body and gamma-undecalactone for waxy substance.

Usage in Perfumery

A floral note with 4 Fragrantica placements and no Parfumo attestation. Fragrantica files it under Flowers and warns that the scent varies by species, 'from vanilla, sweet to fresh citrusy'. Its job is a honeyed night-flower that is not gardenia and not tuberose.