Pikul Flower

Note Profile

Botanical

About

Pikul is the Thai name for the flower of Mimusops elengi, a tree of South and Southeast Asia known in India as bakul or maulsari. The small cream star-shaped blossoms are strongly scented at night and are strung into garlands, dried for tea and used in natural perfume. The smell is heavy, honeyed and warm.

Scent Profile

Honeyed leads because it is the one word both describing sources choose independently. Premiere Peau: 'heavy, honeyed, night-blooming sweetness' and 'heavy honeyed sweetness, faintly wintergreen, warm'. Fragrenza, separately: 'a rich, honey-drenched sweetness' and 'facets of ripe fruit, honey and warm spice'. White_floral is the second agreed fact, reached by comparison rather than by name: Premiere Peau calls it 'jasmine's quieter, more resinous cousin', 'denser than jasmine, less indolic', and Fragrenza calls the blossoms 'sweetly heady'. Sweet_vanillic and floral carry the generic sweetness both sources put under the honey. Fruity is Fragrenza's 'ripe fruit' and 'dried fruit', which is a specific claim from one voice only, so it stays below the leads. Amber_resinous is Premiere Peau's 'more resinous' twice over, the word it uses to separate this flower from jasmine. Warm_spice is Fragrenza's 'warm spice', again a single voice. Cooling_mentholic is the odd one and the most specific claim in the dossier: 'the methyl salicylate gives it a faintly wintergreen edge underneath the sweetness'. Wintergreen is exactly what this facet holds, and the word 'faintly' is why it sits at 0.25 and not higher. Below the line, lactonic is the 'faint traces of cream', animalic is what is left of 'narcotic' and 'almost fermented' after the source has told us it is less indolic than jasmine, tropical and powdery are held low.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeBase · ~10h lasting

Family Sweet & Gourmand, Floral

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

Origin

Natural, from the flowers of Mimusops elengi (Sapotaceae), a tree native to South Asia, Southeast Asia and northern Australia. The flowers are picked fresh for garlands and temple offerings and sun-dried for floral infusions and green tea in Thailand. Wikipedia records that they 'may also be used in natural perfume', but no commercial absolute or oil trade was found, so most perfumery use is reconstruction.

Usage in Perfumery

Rare. One Fragrantica placement and none in the second vocabulary. Used where a heavy indolic-adjacent temple floral is wanted without jasmine's green sharpness, typically in South and Southeast Asian themed compositions alongside champaca, ylang and sandalwood.