Lily-of-the-Valley Leaf
Note Profile
About
The leaf of muguet rather than the flower. Green, crisp and faintly watery, with none of the sweet soapy floral character the flower note carries. It is the botanical half of the plant, used to give a muguet accord a real stem and leaf under it.
Scent Profile
Lily-of-the-Valley Leaf smells green above everything else, crisp and vegetal rather than sweet. A faintly watery, aquatic edge runs through it, wetter than the flower and less sweet. It has none of the soapy, floral softness the flower note carries, reading instead as the plant's real stem and leaf character.
ScentWheel
Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.
ScentArt
Origin
No commercial extraction of Convallaria majalis leaves exists. The plant is toxic - it carries cardiac glycosides - and the flower itself is a mute flower that yields nothing to distillation or extraction. So both halves of this plant are reconstructions. The leaf is built from cis-3-hexenol, which is leaf alcohol, together with green terpenes and watery-fresh modifiers. That is a different toolkit from the flower note, which is built from hydroxycitronellal, Lilial and Lyral.
Usage in Perfumery
A green modifier in spring, garden and naturalistic compositions. Perfumers use it to put the plant back under the flower, so that a muguet accord reads as something growing rather than as a synthetic bouquet. It also works on its own as a clean green top note next to galbanum, violet leaf, cucumber and aquatic materials.
Similar Notes
Perfumes featuring Lily-of-the-Valley Leaf
A selection of reviewed perfumes where Lily-of-the-Valley Leaf appears prominently.
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