Patchouli Blossom

Note Profile

Botanical

About

Patchouli blossom is the flower of the patchouli plant, and it smells like patchouli made pale. The earthy-woody core is still there but it is thinner than the leaf oil, and a soft honeyed florality sits on top of it. No supplier sells a patchouli flower absolute. The one product actually sold under this name is a two-material blend of patchouli and honeysuckle, so that pairing is the only perceptual anchor this note has.

Scent Profile

Earthy leads and it is patchouli's own facet, but at half the published Patchouli note's 0.92 because the flower tissue carries about a seventh the patchoulol and the one commercial product gives honeysuckle equal billing. Floral is the honeysuckle half of that blend plus the 'delicate, floral' reading of phytol, one of the four flower-only compounds. Honeyed is honeysuckle's own strongest facet, at roughly half its published weight for the same blend reason. Dry_woody tracks the earthy facet down from Patchouli's in the same proportion. White_floral is the register honeysuckle sits in, held below floral because no source calls this note indolic or heady. Powdery is phytol's 'powdery waxiness', named in the only single-material description available. Green comes from honeysuckle, which carries green, and from the flower and stem tissue the material would come from. Below the naming line: amber_resinous for phytol's 'balsamic' plus patchouli's own resinous weight, sweet_vanillic, mossy_chypre and cooling_mentholic as reduced echoes of the parent note, and fruity, creamy_woody and aromatic_herbal each, none of them stated by any source and held low rather than at zero.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeHeart · ~7h lasting

Family Woody & Earthy, Floral

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

Origin

Pogostemon cablin, the same plant the leaf-derived Patchouli note comes from. The flower is a different tissue and a GC-MS and UHPLC-QTOFMS study of the separated tissues measured the difference: patchoulol, the sesquiterpene alcohol that carries the earthy-woody patchouli character, ran 3.71 mg/g dry weight in flowers against 24.89 mg/g in leaves, about a seventh (Wang et al., Frontiers in Plant Science, PMC10009150). The same study found four compounds in the flower that the leaf does not have at all: 2-vinylfuran, pogostol, neophytadiene and phytol. Phytol is sold on its own and Perfumer Supply House calls it 'a delicate, floral and balsamic aroma with a powdery waxiness'. The plant rarely flowers in cultivation, which is why no flower extraction is on the market.

Usage in Perfumery

Parfumo records 7 perfumes across 5 brands. Fragrantica does not carry the term. The Candlemaker's Store sells a Patchouli Blossom fragrance oil and gives its whole composition as 'a fragrant blend of patchouli and honeysuckle', which is what perfumers using this term appear to mean: patchouli with the earth pulled back and a nectar-sweet flower put over it. Use it where straight patchouli would be too heavy or too dark.