Jasminum Auriculatum

Note Profile

Botanical

About

Jasminum auriculatum, juhi or mullai, is the third of the three commercially extracted jasmines and the one that does not smell like jasmine. It opens green and grassy rather than floral, and carries a frankincense-balsamic warmth that neither grandiflorum nor sambac has. The white-flower body is there, waxy and creamy, but it sits behind the green.

Scent Profile

Green and grassy first, piercing and almost vegetal, closer to crushed stalk and green tea than to petals. Behind it a waxy white-floral body of jasmine and gardenia, less indolic than sambac or grandiflorum, with a soft general floralcy around it. A herbal, aromatic edge runs through the whole thing - this is the most herbaceous of the three commercial jasmines. Underneath sits a resinous, balsamic frankincense warmth, a tropical grassy depth, and the waxy fatty richness both suppliers name and both place behind the green, with a thin creamy edge, a faint incense smokiness and a whisper of suede.

ScentWheel

Breadthmedium

EnvelopeHeart · ~8h lasting

Family Floral, Green & Aromatic, Waxy & Fatty

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

Origin

Solvent extraction of the flowers of Jasminum auriculatum, Oleaceae, grown commercially in south India alongside J. sambac and J. grandiflorum. Concrete yields run 0.28 to 0.36 per cent, and the absolute is drawn from that. Named constituents include indole, benzyl benzoate, methyl anthranilate and benzyl alcohol, so the indolic machinery is present even though the material reads as less indolic than its two relatives.

Usage in Perfumery

A green-floral transformer used in traces, not as a soliflore. It lifts white-floral accords out of the familiar, brings jungle and tropical-green effects to forest and exotic themes, and bridges florals into incense. It pairs with tuberose, ylang-ylang, gardenia, champaca and frankincense. Tenacity is exceptional for a floral, so a small overdose stays for days.