Floral

Floral

Flowers with clean, transparent, largely non-indolic character

floral 266 notes 1,041 materials 9 anchors

What it smells like

Rose, violet, geranium, peony, hyacinth, lily. This is the broad centre of the floral space. It is recognisably a flower, without the animal weight of the white flowers or the dry cosmetic blur of iris.

Where it stops

Floral stops where indole starts. Jasmine and tuberose carry a molecule that is faecal at strength and floral in trace. That changes the register entirely, so they are held separately as White Floral.

Smells most like

rose - and in the same register, blossoms, geraniol.

Notes that load on it

Notes from our catalogue whose position on this facet is 0.40 or higher, strongest first. A note is not filed under one facet: it carries a value on all 34 at once, and these are the ones where this axis is doing real work.

Materials that carry it

Real substances, each keyed by its CAS registry number, that an external perfumery vocabulary publishes with a term meaning this facet outright. This is the layer that makes a facet checkable against something outside our own database.

Materials carrying this facet, with registry number, source terms and regulatory status
Material CAS Terms Status
hydroxycitronellol CAS 107-74-4 floral, lily, peony, rose
9-decenyl acetate CAS 50816-18-7 floral, magnolia, peony, rose
2-cyclohexylethanol CAS 4442-79-9 floral, lily, peony, rose
4-methoxybenzyl alcohol CAS 105-13-5 floral, hawthorn, hyacinth, rose Declarable IFRA
(2R)-2-phenylpropan-1-ol CAS 19141-40-3 floral, hawthorn, hyacinth, peony
2-methyl-4-phenyl-2-butanol CAS 103-05-9 floral, lily, rose, violet
3-methyl-5-phenylpentan-1-ol CAS 55066-48-3 floral, geranium, lily, rose
rosyrane CAS 60335-71-9 floral, geranium, rose
citronellol CAS 141-25-3 floral, geranium, rose IFRA
neryl formate CAS 2142-94-1 floral, geranium, rose
myraldyl acetate CAS 72403-67-9 floral, lily, magnolia IFRA
rhodinyl formate CAS 141-09-3 floral, geranium, rose
geranyl hexanoate CAS 10032-02-7 floral, geranium, rose
geranyl nonanoate CAS 68039-29-2 floral, geranium, rose
geranyl propionate CAS 105-90-8 floral, geranium, rose
linalyl propionate CAS 144-39-8 floral, lily, rose
phenylacetaldehyde CAS 122-78-1 floral, hyacinth, rose IFRA
citronellyl tiglate CAS 24717-85-9 floral, geranium, rose
rhodinyl propionate CAS 105-89-5 floral, geranium, rose
geranyl anthranilate CAS 67859-99-8 floral, geranium, rose
l-menthyl propionate CAS 4951-48-8 floral, peony, rose
phenethyl salicylate CAS 87-22-9 floral, hyacinth, rose
p-tolyl phenylacetate CAS 101-94-0 hyacinth, lily, rose
citronellyl ethyl oxalate CAS 60788-25-2 floral, lily, rose
(-)-isopulegol CAS 50373-36-9 floral, geranium, rose
2-methyloctanal CAS 7786-29-0 floral, lily, rose
3-phenoxytoluene CAS 3586-14-9 floral, geranium, rose
1,1-dimethoxyoctane CAS 10022-28-3 floral, rose, violet
2-phenylethyl formate CAS 104-62-1 floral, hyacinth, rose
2-phenylethyl pivalate CAS 67662-96-8 floral, geranium, rose

Showing 30 of 1,041. The full set ships with the published standard rather than being paginated here.

Reading the two flags

Declarable means the substance appears in Annex III of the EU Cosmetics Regulation, so it has to be named on the ingredient list once it passes a concentration threshold. IFRA means an IFRA Standard restricts or prohibits its use. Both are facts about the substance, not about any fragrance: a perfume can contain a declarable material below the threshold and never print it, and a restricted material used within its limit is used correctly.

The source also supplies no common name for a large share of materials, so those display as a bare registry number and are ranked last. They are kept because they are real evidence: dropping them would make the vocabulary look better described than it is.

Anchor terms

A facet on its own is just a word we chose. An anchor is what makes it checkable: a term in an external, independently maintained vocabulary of odour descriptions, built for perfumery materials rather than for us. The material list above is drawn from the direct terms only, because a partial term corroborates too weakly to stand as evidence on its own.

Direct Terms that mean this facet outright
  • floral
  • geranium
  • hawthorn
  • hyacinth
  • lily
  • magnolia
  • peony
  • rose
  • violet
Partial Terms that lean this way but also load elsewhere
  • narcissus

The rest of Floral

The other facets in this family. A note can load on any of them at the same time as this one, so they are neighbours rather than alternatives.

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