Club circle
Rose, jasmine, tuberose, lily of the valley: flowers in the garden and in perfume.
The Florals & Bouquets circle brings together people who love flowers, in the garden as much as on skin. Members share the smell of a rose after rain, a jasmine met in a narrow street, a question about tuberose or about what sets a soliflore apart from a bouquet. The photos show flowers, petals and fields, and the posts look for the right words to describe them. The floral fragrance family works as a map to find your way.
24 posts · 35 active members
juniper_julesin Florals & Bouquets · Portland ·
TipStudio notes: I brought the potted jasmine in from the porch for winter and it fills the whole studio, but after an hour I can't smell it at all. A minute in the yard and it's back, and it hits harder then the kiln ever does. Wikipedia's page on olfactory…
hana.neroliin Florals & Bouquets · Vancouver ·
Discovery
On my walk there's an osmanthus shrub flowering beside a little tea shop, tiny pale orange flowers you'd never notice, and the whole block smells of ripe apricot. My grandmother in Japan called it kinmokusei and for her it meant autumn. The osmanthus page…
joon.yuzu TL;DR: hunting for one in Seattle this weekend. Apricot plus tea is my whole personality. That's my two cents.
ingrid_berlinin Florals & Bouquets · Berlin ·
Discovery
A piece of orris root from a friend's pot-pourri jar. Not a flower at all: carrot, cold earth, a powder that sits very low, like a bass note you feel more than hear. The orris page says the root dries for years before distillation. I wear orris since two…
theodora.fig We have an old pot-pourri bowl at the shop and the dust at the bottom smells exactly like that. I always blamed the velvet.
wren.and.mossin Florals & Bouquets · Asheville ·
Scent diary
Last few honeysuckle flowers on the back fence, and they only really smell after six. Sweet like the drop of nectar we used to pull out of the stems as kids, with something heavier underneath that I can't name yet.
imogen.magnoliain Florals & Bouquets · Cambridge ·
Question
The big evergreen magnolia against a college wall had one last flower today, huge and creamy. It smelled of lemon, almost like washing-up liquid but nice. Is that normal for magnolia?
ingrid_berlin Normal. The southern magnolia is lemon-citronella scented, the magnolia page says; perfume magnolia mostly comes from Asian champaca. Bright treble…
kasia.berlinin Florals & Bouquets · Berlin ·
QuestionAt home in Poland my grandmother had lily of the valley under the kitchen window, and in spring the whole room smelled of it. I wanted a little oil of it for a cloth in my bike workshop. A man at the flea market told me there is no real one, only imitation.…
ingrid_berlin True: the flower gives too little to extract for perfumery, so every lily of the valley note is rebuilt from synthetic molecules . You only ever hear…
mo_from_leicesterin Florals & Bouquets · Leicester ·
Memory
Cleared up after my niece's wedding this morning. The garlands had been hanging all night, roses and marigolds on string, and the hall smelled of honey, tea leaves and something green and bitter from the marigolds. Took a few petals home in my pocket.
nell.wattlein Florals & Bouquets · Melbourne ·
Scent diary
Okay, nerd moment: the silver wattle on our street has finished. A week of spring rain and the pompoms went from yellow to rusty brown. Perfumers' mimosa is this tree, Acacia dealbata, from south-eastern Australia, and not anything in the genus Mimosa. The…
aroha.rain Its on the weed list over here in NZ, the mimosa page says so too. Still smells sweet as on my walk to the ferry.
mags.lavenderin Florals & Bouquets · Norwich ·
Snapshot
Morning all, I cut the last few roses by the shed before the wind gets them. Half still in bud, the open ones holding rain in their middles like little cups. They smell of a warm jam pan and a cold wet leaf at the same time, alot stronger than anything from a…
grace_rose_nz Funny reading this with my first buds just showing colour here in Dunedin. Yours are going to bed and mine are waking up.
kasia.berlinin Florals & Bouquets · Berlin ·
Memory
When October gets cold, in Poland the stalls at every cemetery gate start to fill with chrysanthemums and candles for All Saints. Here in Berlin I found one stall near the Polish church and I stood with my nose in the pots. Bitter, green, a little like sage…
trudy.lilac Same bitter green as the pots on my neighbour's steps. I always thought they smelled of nothing until I put my nose right in.
ingrid_berlinin Florals & Bouquets · Berlin ·
ReadingRead the Wikipedia page on methyl dihydrojasmonate , the molecule sold as Hedione. A Firmenich chemist characterised it between 1957 and 1962, and Dior's Eau Sauvage, in 1966, was its first major commercial use. Jasmine with the bass turned down. /Ingrid
kasia.berlin Is this the same molecule that makes lily of the valley in perfume, or another one?
bridie.hobartin Florals & Bouquets · Hobart ·
Snapshot
Spring has the orchards up the Huon gone white, and a grower brought blossom branches in with the last of his stored apples. People kept stopping to sniff the branches instead of buying fruit. Honey and a clean pillowcase, with cold air off the river on top.
nell.wattle Same season here, but no orchards in the inner city. Does the blossom actually smell like the fruit?
hamish_heatherin Florals & Bouquets · Edinburgh ·
ChallengeAye, a wee game for a dreich weekend. I describe a flower in three words, you guess, and whoever gets it posts the next one. Folk who come into the shop play this with whisky and never loose interest. Mine: custard, rubber, sunshine.
dex_in_brooklyn custard and rubber is a weird combo but you're describing ylang-ylang, I'd bet my knives on it
rafa_azaharin Florals & Bouquets · London ·
Memory
Hello friends, grey sky over London today and I am thinking of Seville in spring. When the orange trees in the streets open, the whole city smells sweet and bitter together, stronger at night. We call it azahar. My mother writes that the trees are full of…
dario.bergamot Same for me with bergamot in Reggio. The trees there get heavy with fruit in autumn and my grandfather starts to talk about the harvest every evening.
shona.whinin Florals & Bouquets · Aberdeen ·
QuestionI read more than I post here. I've been reading about Grasse and can't work out whether the jasmine in perfume still comes from there, or whether that's the postcard version. Does anyone know?
bev.boston I always assumed all of it does. Isn't that the whole point of Grasse?
maeve.mossin Florals & Bouquets · Galway ·
Snapshot
Here's a thing. The heather along the bog road has gone from purple to rust and it still smells of honey when the sun gets on it, and the dog won't leave it alone and neither will I. A bit of dust in it too, like an old hymn book. Grand walk this morning…
hamish_heather Ours on the Pentlands is the same rust now. Heather honey and a wee bit of dust, exactly.