Pennyroyal

Note Profile

Botanical 2 perfumes

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About

A wild mint that is harsher than the kitchen kinds. Sharp and penetrating, with a bitter green herb body and a camphor lift.

Scent Profile

Pennyroyal smells strongly of mint, similar to spearmint but sharper, penetrating and piercing rather than clean. A camphor lift sits on top of that mint. A strong, wild-meadow herbal character runs alongside it, more prominent here than in gentler mints. The green is bitter and medicinal rather than fresh-cut, almost biting, and there is little of the soft sweetness that peppermint or spearmint carry.

ScentWheel

Breadthmedium

EnvelopeTop · ~2h lasting

Family Fresh & Citrus, Green & Aromatic

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

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Materials That Can Make This Note

Perfumers can make Pennyroyal from this natural extract.

Natural extract Pennyroyal oil, Europe

Smell words come from published sources.

A given perfume with this note may use this material, or something else.

Origin

The leaf and flowering top of Mentha pulegium, European pennyroyal. The oil is steam-distilled and is 80 to 92 per cent pulegone, a ketone that smells more medicinal than the menthol of peppermint or the carvone of spearmint. That one number explains most of the difference between this note and the culinary mints.

Usage in Perfumery

Rare in finished fragrance. Pennyroyal oil is hepatotoxic and is not usable at any effective concentration, so the note as brands print it is a green herbal idea rather than the oil itself. Five Fragrantica perfumes carry it, all in the herbal and fougere direction, where it reads as a sharper and wilder mint than peppermint would give.