Milkweeds

Note Profile

Botanical 3 perfumes

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About

Milkweeds are the Asclepias genus, North American perennials that bleed a white latex sap when a stem or leaf breaks. About 140 species carry the name. Two are described by the sources found here: common milkweed (A. syriaca) and swamp milkweed (A. incarnata).

Scent Profile

Milkweeds smell of crushed green stems, with a creamy, slightly acrid undertone from the broken sap. That white, milky sap gives the note a lactonic body second only to the green. The flowers are a different register entirely, a heavy, honeyed scent close to lilac and vanilla, sweet rather than green. Both readings sit in the note because nothing ties the sap and the flower together.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeHeart · ~4h lasting

Family Green & Aromatic, Sweet & Gourmand

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

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ScentArt

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Materials That Can Make This Note

Perfumers can build Milkweeds from materials such as:

Benzaldehyde almond · cherry · cinnamon

Smell words come from published sources.

Allergens perfumes with this note can list: Bitter almond, Benzyl alcohol

A given perfume with this note may use some of these, or something else, and may or may not contain the allergens above.

Origin

No commercial milkweed extract or absolute exists. Premiere Peau states that directly. Any milkweed note in a perfume is a built accord, so the word names the smell of the living plant, not a bottled material.

Usage in Perfumery

Four Fragrantica placements, none on Parfumo. Perfumery uses the word for the green sappy stem, not the flower. Premiere Peau: 'In perfumery, milkweed typically references the green, sappy, lactonic quality of the plant rather than the flower.' The same source says the flower side is built separately, from heliotropin and linalool.