Flowers and their scents are among the most famous perfumes throughout history. Since man began to create his civilization, he has always tried to acquire those charming and picturesque scents that nature emits around him in an aromatic bottle. But how did the perfumers finally manage to create these wonderful scents?
Definition of silent flowers
They are very fragrant flowers, famous for their wonderful scents, but no way has been discovered to extract their essential oils so far, all traditional methods have failed, and even the most famous and most skilled perfume makers in the world have not been able to extract the scents of those silent appearances so far. In the middle of the eighteenth century, the name “silent flowers” was given to these flowers, because they did not reveal the secret of extracting their fragrant smell until now, and despite that, the notes of these flowers are often found in the main components of the well-known and most widespread perfumes.
How to make muted floral fragrances
Perfume makers have had to devise new and innovative ways to artificially produce silent flower fragrances in laboratories, using different combinations of natural raw materials, molecules and synthetic compounds. Usually flower fragrance consists of several scents, for example honeysuckle fragrance consists of the scent of jasmine with other aspects of botanical, honey and orange, which means that the scents of artificial silent flowers can vary from one perfumer to another according to their olfactory sensitivity and personal memories and experiences they evoke . Over time the range of materials a perfumer uses to create his scents continues to grow and evolve allowing him to better express himself and enhance the floral compositions.
Synthetics to evoke the scents of silent perfumes
Organic chemistry has enabled perfumers to imitate the scents of these silent flowers since the second half of the nineteenth century, by putting olfactory molecules at the service of their art, recreating the fragrances of flowers that do not reveal their soul.
Silent flower species
All flowers are muted except for rose, jasmine, tuberose, magnolia, narcissus, daffodil, mimosa, cassia, orange blossom, lavender, broom, ylang-ylang and osmanthus.
Among the most famous silent flowers:
- lily of the valley Sweet peas
- tulips
- whistling
- Violet
- lilac
- peony
- honeysuckle
- carnation
- Gardenia
Among the most famous silent flowers:
Each perfumer has in the group of chemical components he uses in his aromatic creation several basic molecules, the most famous of which is “indole” which is found in all white flowers, and gives off a sweet floral scent when used in low concentration Perfume makers also use vinyl ethyl alcohol, which is one of the natural components of the rose, and is used to reproduce its hyacinth bean, and there are also green and fresh notes of lily of the valley, kilim, musk or even original musk, their aromas are simulated using hydroxy citronellal. The tuberose fragrance, which can be smelled in patchouli eby, usually consists of a mixture of ylang-ylang, coconut, mimosa, indole and other olfactory elements. This molecule called “Isolat” is extracted from natural essential oils and repeated to obtain a fraction of the aroma, and this takes a lot of scientific help to be noticed. If we go back to the early beginnings of perfume we can cite two examples of two synthetic molecules that were created with great care and expertise to do the job that nature refused to do. The first molecule is the violet molecule, which was created in 1830 in the Russian perfume laboratories, and the second is the first synthetic aldehyde, which was made in 1874 for purely economic reasons to produce vanillin perfume.