Rumex

Note Profile

Botanical

About

Rumex is a sharp, cold green note with a sour bite and a metallic edge. It reads as torn leaf and raw stem rather than as a soft herb. A faint hay sweetness appears late, under the tartness. It carries no warmth, no spice and no floral softening.

Scent Profile

Green leads and is the only word every clause of the source shares: 'intensely green', 'fresh-cut grass', 'the bitter-green backbone'. Sour because the source opens on 'sour-vegetal' and returns to it in French as 'acidité caractéristique, aigre'. Mineral for 'closer to metal than to herb' and 'iron filings'. Sour and mineral are set close together on purpose. The source uses one phrase, 'metallique-verte', for both qualities and never separates them, so neither facet is allowed to dominate the other. Aldehydic because the formula names citric-metallic aldehydes but no description reports an aldehydic smell. Fruity and citrus come from a single simile, 'a squeeze of unripe green apple'. Tobacco_hay is the 'faint hay-like sweetness' the source places only in the far dry-down. Floral, white_floral, fresh_spice and warm_spice are zero because the source states the absence directly: 'No warmth, no spice, no floral softness.' That is a stated absence, not an inferred one.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeHeart · ~5h lasting

Family Green & Aromatic, Fruity, Elemental

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

Origin

Rumex is the genus of the sorrels and docks, about 200 species in the buckwheat family. Rumex acetosa, common sorrel, is the species perfumery refers to. Sorrel leaves yield no commercial essential oil, so the perfumery note is a reconstruction rather than an extract. The sourced formula is built from cis-3-hexenol for leaf alcohol, citric-metallic aldehydes for the cold edge, acetic sharpness for the tartness, and galbanum resinoid for the bitter-green backbone. A CAS number exists for a Rumex crispus extract, 84775-48-4, but no source ties it to a perfumery material in trade.

Usage in Perfumery

Rumex is used as a heart note to push a green accord towards sour and metallic and away from herbal. Its sourced strength is medium. It is thinly used: 3 Fragrantica placements and none on Parfumo, so it is a specialist green rather than shared vocabulary.