Portlandia

Note Profile

Botanical

About

Portlandia is the flower of Portlandia grandiflora, a Caribbean shrub in the coffee family. It is grown as an ornamental for its large white trumpet blooms, which smell of chocolate and vanilla and give off most of their scent at night. No perfumery extract of it was found. Every source describing the smell is describing the living plant.

Scent Profile

Coffee_cacao leads. All three sources put chocolate first and two of them use no other word for the main impression: 'rich hot chocolate with vanilla', 'between vanilla and chocolate', 'a scent reminiscent of creamy chocolate'. Sweet_vanillic is close behind because every source names vanilla in the same sentence as the chocolate, and one grower ranks it as half the impression rather than a trim. Floral and white_floral come from Fragrantica, which is the only source that treats it as a flower smell at all and calls it 'a floral similar to gardenia'. The three plant sources do not mention any petal quality. That is not the same as denying one, so the floral facets are carried at a wide spread rather than zeroed. Lactonic is the word 'creamy' that two sources attach to the chocolate, the texture of a drink rather than a milk note in its own right. Powdery is the cocoa-powder side of the cacao impression, inferred, not stated.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeHeart · ~5h lasting

Family Sweet & Gourmand, Floral

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

Origin

Portlandia grandiflora (Rubiaceae), native to Jamaica and Cuba and grown as an ornamental across the tropics. The scent comes off the open flower. There is no attested absolute, concrete or CO2 extract, so any use in perfumery is a reconstruction.

Usage in Perfumery

Rare. One perfume on Fragrantica names it. Where it appears it is a cocoa-vanilla floral rather than a white-floral heart, and it does the work of a gourmand accord that happens to smell like a flower.