Opium Poppy
Note Profile
About
Opium poppy is the flower and green plant of Papaver somniferum. It is one of the few poppies with a smell anyone has written down. Growers report a faintly milky, green, chocolate-vegetal scent in some cultivars. No essential oil, absolute or CO2 extract is made from it, so a perfume using this name is an accord built to the plant, not an extraction of it.
Scent Profile
Opium Poppy smells mostly green, stalk-and-leaf green rather than cut grass, with a faintly milky, chocolate-vegetal edge. That cocoa-like quality sits just under the green, close to chocolate but not really it. A soft, milky lactonic note threads through, faint rather than heavy. If the bloom itself has any scent it is a light one, since it is the plant more than the flower that carries the smell.
ScentWheel
Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.
ScentArt
Origin
Papaver somniferum, grown across Europe, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and India. The scent claim comes from garden and horticultural observation of the living plant, not from a distillery. Premiere Peau records it as 'faintly milky, green, almost chocolate-vegetal' in some cultivars. Wikipedia names the same thing independently, as the 'exotic chocolate-vegetal fragrance note of some cultivars' that gardeners seek out. Neither source is analytical and no GC-MS profile was found.
Usage in Perfumery
Used as an accord in compositions that want the plant rather than the red field-poppy image. It sits in the heart, where the milky and green facets can hold a cocoa-adjacent sweetness without turning it into a gourmand. Blends with fig, violet leaf, milky woods and soft cacao. It is not the same job as the published poppy note, which is a fantasy accord for the red flower and carries no cocoa or milk.
Similar Notes
Perfumes featuring Opium Poppy
A selection of reviewed perfumes where Opium Poppy appears prominently.
No perfumes featuring this note have been reviewed yet. Check back soon.