The other
day a customer contacted me asking me why no one has accurately recreated the
scents of some of her favorite hybrids. It should be simple, right? Can’t one
just do a chemical analysis of the molecules that are in the orchid fragrance,
then put them together? In theory it should be as simple as following a recipe.
Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.
Of course it
is possible to do a gas chromatography (GC) analysis of any orchid’s fragrance
headspace, and this has been done for some species, sometimes multiple times in
multiple contexts. Some of these data are available online. However, once
that's done, there are several issues that make it difficult or impossible to
reconstruct the scent of your favorite orchid plant with complete accuracy:
1. Orchid
scents are not uniform across individual plants, even for cloned hybrids. My
Cattleya Bob Betts may smell very different from yours. Even the flowers of a
single plant can smell dramatically different depending on culture conditions,
the weather on any particular day, and how mature the flower is. To further
complicate things, the flowers may smell completely different in the morning
than they do at night. Which version to use? If I use my morning, young flower,
grown in cool sunny conditions version, you may not recognize it.
2. Orchid
flowers are continually emitting a complete mix of base notes (large
molecules), middle notes (mid-size molecules) and top notes (small, volatile
molecules). In a perfume, the top notes evaporate after a while, leaving the
heavier molecules, so the scent evolves over the course of wearing it, losing
progressively larger molecules until you’re left with only the heaviest ones. To
achieve a "live-flower" effect with a perfume, you would have to continually
spray yourself, in which case you would quickly overdose with the middle and
base notes.
3. Many of
the chemical components of orchid fragrances are not available commercially to
perfumers.
4. It is not
practical (and maybe not even possible) to distill enough orchid flowers to
produce an oil or absolute that could be used in perfumery. In any case, the
products of distillation or extraction of any flower do not really smell like the fresh
flowers.
These same
issues apply to any sort of flower fragrance, but are easier to tackle in
flowers like orange blossom or rose that can be cultivated commercially on a
large scale and distilled by the ton to produce a natural oil or absolute with
many of the characteristics of the original. Because of their huge diversity
(over 800 genera and more than 20 thousand species) and the complexity of their
scents, orchids are some of the most difficult flowers to try to recreate in
perfume form.
[All photos are mine: Sedirea japonica (top), Phalaenopsis bellina (middle), Stanhopea wardii (bottom)]
Posts
There are so many fragrant orchids! The Stanhopea wardii is one of my favorites. Is the plant in the photo blooming in your orchid house?
ReplyDeleteI used to believe that orchid scents could be duplicated as perfume, but as I learn more about perfume making and smell more and more fragrant orchids I realize that this just cannot happen. I will have to be content to enjoy the scents of my orchids as they bloom. For the past two weeks my kitchen island has been the home of two re-blooming orchid pound puppies, a large spidery Brassia longissima and a yellow Miltoniopsis hybrid. In the morning the Miltoniopsis smells of ylang ylang, spice and cream, the Brassia of camphor and a sweet light citrus. They both smell just a little different and more or less intense each day.
The Stanhopea wardii photo is from one that was blooming in my greenhouse a year or two ago. You can actually see the green framework of the Rion greenhouse behind it. Right now, my Stanhopea oculata is putting out a spike. I can't wait to smell it! Stanhopeas have some of the most unexpected scents, all in a good way. Your pound puppies sound yummy-smelling!
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