Nalca

Note Profile

Botanical

About

Nalca is Gunnera tinctoria, the giant-leaved Chilean plant whose peeled stalks are eaten sour. The one perfumery description found runs green into earthy: fresh cut grass and rich vegetation at the opening, a tartness that earns the common name Chilean rhubarb, then a rounder and deeper drydown like soil after rain. It is not related to culinary rhubarb and does not smell like the published Rhubarb note.

Scent Profile

Green leads and the single source says so three times over: a fresh green scent, a crispness like freshly cut grass, and rich green undertones. It is held below Grass and Galbanum at 0.88 because the same source keeps pulling the description towards soil rather than sap. Earthy is the second claim and it is described as the direction of travel, damp earth at the start and rich soil after rainfall at the end. Sour is the rhubarb thread, named once and explicitly as subtle, so it sits at half the published Rhubarb note's. Aromatic_herbal follows crisp herbaceous notes, which is the source's own phrase. Mossy_chypre, aquatic_ozonic and fruity are small readings of the damp and the tartness, and no source names any of the three. Every value rests on one glossary entry, so spreads run 0.14 to 0.24 and the confidence is 0.36.

ScentWheel

Breadthmedium

EnvelopeHeart · ~6h lasting

Family Green & Aromatic, Woody & Earthy

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

Origin

Gunnera tinctoria, a large perennial of southern Chile and Argentina, naturalised and invasive in Ireland, the Azores and New Zealand. It is called nalca or pangue in Chile and Chilean rhubarb in English. The resemblance to rhubarb is in the stalk and the taste, not in the botany. Gunnera and Rheum sit in different plant orders. No supplier of a nalca extract could be found and no CAS or composition data exists for it.

Usage in Perfumery

One perfume in the data names it and none in Parfumo. Premiere Peau places it as a heart note that opens fresh and grassy, grows rounder and earthier over hours, and dries down to damp soil. Whether that is a distilled natural or a built accord is not established by any source. Treat it as a green-vegetal heart with an earthy tail, used where a plain grass note would be too bright and too short.