Monarda

Note Profile

Botanical 2 perfumes

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About

Monarda is a genus of North American mint-family herbs, known as bee balm, wild bergamot or Oswego tea. The oil is steam-distilled from the flowering tops. Its smell depends on the chemotype. Some oils are led by thymol or carvacrol and smell of thyme and oregano. Others are led by geraniol and smell lemony and geranium-like.

Scent Profile

Monarda smells strongly herbal. The thymol and carvacrol type is like a wilder oregano: sharp and medicinal, with a camphoraceous, minty edge and crushed green leaf. The geraniol type is softer: fresh, herbal and lemony, with a rosy, geranium-like floral note. Despite the name, neither type smells of bergamot orange. It carries a warm, spicy pungency, a little like clove, mostly in the thymol type.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeHeart · ~4h lasting

Family Green & Aromatic, Fresh & Citrus

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Materials That Can Make This Note

Perfumers can build Monarda from materials such as:

Carvacrol smoky · phenolic · thyme
Thymol medicinal · phenolic · thyme

Smell words come from published sources.

Allergens perfumes with this note can list: Geraniol

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

Origin

Monarda fistulosa, wild bergamot, and Monarda didyma, scarlet bee balm, are the species distilled. Most analysed oils of both are led by carvacrol or thymol, with p-cymene. Growers in France and Canada also distil a geraniol-rich M. fistulosa. Its oil carries linalool and citral beside the geraniol.

Usage in Perfumery

Monarda is a rare note. Perfumers use it as a top-to-heart aromatic modifier in herbal and floral compositions. The geraniol-rich oil blends with lavender, citrus oils, petitgrain and sandalwood.