Jasminum Polyanthum

Note Profile

Botanical

About

Jasminum polyanthum, the pink or winter jasmine, a climbing jasmine with deep pink buds that open white. The one perfumer who has smelled and worked the raw flower says it does not read as a jasmine at all. It reads creamy, buttery and unripe, closer to sandalwood and star jasmine than to grandiflorum or sambac.

Scent Profile

White_floral leads because the referent is a jasmine flower, but it is capped below jasmine at 0.85 for a reason the source states twice: 'J. polyanthum smells less vibrant and more feathery' and 'it seems less like a jasmine and more like a mix of sandalwood and star jasmine'. Creamy_woody is that sandalwood, called out in both posts: 'buttery like sandalwood, without being oily, as if butter had no fat' and 'a standout spontaneous sandalwood base note'. Green is unripeness rather than stalk: 'It smells green, young, immature. It has blossomed without ripening.' Tropical is the banana of the enfleurage opening and the 'soft tropical beach' the source sets against star jasmine's rainforest. Lactonic is 'suntan lotion with its anti-gourmand milkiness'. Below the line sit floral, sweet_vanillic for the 'murmurs of vanilla', nutty for the cheerios, and animalic, held low but not zeroed because the source both denies the sharp indolic edge of the angel-wing jasmines and still hears indole.

ScentWheel

Breadthmedium

EnvelopeHeart · ~6h lasting

Family Floral, Woody & Earthy, Green & Aromatic, Fruity

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

Origin

Native to south-west China and Burma, now grown worldwide as a garden and conservatory climber. There is no commercial extraction for perfumery. The only material found is enfleurage made in small batches by one independent natural perfumer, Wild Veil, who ran it from November 2023 to February 2024. No supplier publishes an odour data sheet for it.

Usage in Perfumery

Rare and effectively artisanal. Used where a jasmine is wanted without the indolic weight, in soft tropical and milky compositions. The buttery sandalwood base it throws by itself means it needs less woody support than a grandiflorum accord does.