Licorice Flower

Note Profile

Botanical

About

Licorice flower is the blossom of the licorice plant, Glycyrrhiza glabra, whose root gives the published licorice note. As a fragrance note it is faint: green and herbal in front, gently anise-like behind, with a soft floral body and only a trace of the root's sweetness.

Scent Profile

Green leads because the one source puts green first and repeats it twice: 'faintly sweet, green-herbal, and gently anise-like', and 'a whisper of the root's sweetness with more green and less candy'. Floral rests on two weak legs that agree with each other. Premiere Peau calls it 'a lighter, more floral alternative to licorice root' and Fragrantica files it under Flowers. Sweet_vanillic is the anethole sweetness, which is where the published anise note carries its own anise character at 0.62. It is set at about half that because both sources call the sweetness faint. Aromatic_herbal is the herbal half of 'green-herbal'. Cooling_mentholic is the small anise chill that anise carries, cut down for the same reason. Powdery is a trace for a soft blossom and nothing states it. Every number here is one glossary's picture of an imagined accord, so the spreads are 0.22 to 0.25 on the four leading facets.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeHeart · ~4h lasting

Family Green & Aromatic

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

Origin

There is no licorice flower extract. The one trade source found, the Premiere Peau glossary, describes a built accord rather than a natural: 'low-level anethole, green-herbal materials, and faint sweetness'. Anethole is the same molecule that carries the root, used here at a far lower level. No GC-MS or headspace study of Glycyrrhiza glabra flower volatiles was found. The published analyses, including the PubMed 'Key Aroma Compounds in Raw Licorice' work, all measure root and rhizome.

Usage in Perfumery

Fragrantica records 2 placements and files the term under Flowers with one line of prose: 'With a sweet and aniseed aroma.' Parfumo records none. Its stated job is to be the light version of the root: 'a lighter, more floral alternative to licorice root', 'less intense than licorice root by an order of magnitude'.