BULBOPHYLLUM ORCHIDS AND LUZONICA FRAGRANCE

It’s Bulbophyllum season in my greenhouse right now, so a description of some of these bizarre orchids seems in order, especially since I have made a Bulbophyllum-inspired fragrance, Luzonica. Bulbos grow like weeds in Southeast Asia where they live as epiphytes on tree trunks and tree branches. The flowers are often pollinated by flies. If you think about what flies are attracted to, you can begin to imagine the typical scents of Bulbos - feces, dead meat, rotten fruit, mostly. A few have pleasant scents, although they’re not your standard florals.

One of the species that I have blooming now is B frostii, with flowers that are usually described as being shaped like wooden clogs. They’re light green with maroon spots, and have a mobile lip that looks just like a maroon tongue. The purpose of the lip is to jiggle in the breeze and attract the fly, then act like a springboard and smash it up against the pollen, which sticks to its back. This pollination system is characteristic of the genus. The “fragrance” of B frostii orchid is like - you guessed it - rotten meat.

Another species that’s blooming right now is B biflorum, shown in the photo at the left. Actually it’s almost always blooming. The flowers look like long dark pink streamers and smell like - you guessed it again - rotten meat.

The third species that’s in bloom right now is B patens. It has shiny, dark maroon flowers that smell like - surprise - cinnamon! It's the one shown in the photo at the very top of this post.

B macranthum is one of the Bulbos that smell like fruit. The first time it bloomed I walked into my greenhouse to find that the whole space smelled like tropical fruit salad, but fruit salad with a dark side. It took me a while to identify the source because this orchid has such tremendous sillage. To make a perfume based on this species, I used a mix of tropical fruit scents, a few tropical florals, and a pinch of funky spice and put it all on a base that’s not anything like your usual girly fruity-floral scent. The base includes “oriental” things like resins, labdanum, and amber, with some animalic notes thrown in by green spikenard and (synthetic) castoreum. It’s interesting that Luzonica seems to be well-liked by all of the men who have tried it so far. I suppose it could be described as a masculine fruity-floral. The effect of Luzonica in soap is interesting because it seems lighter and fruiter and “cleaner” than the fragrance itself. We are testing it in the shower now, and have been enjoying it very much. I think the light, clean fruitiness works well as a bath product, so I lucked out.

MY WEBSITE IS ONLINE!

This morning I managed to identify and fix all of the known bugs in the catalog. By afternoon I put the first trial website online. The url is http://www.orchidscents.com. I think it’s functional in all of the basic respects, but it does need to be tested to find whatever bugs remain.

If you would be willing to help me test the e-commerce system by placing an “order” for the test item that I have embedded in the catalog, you will pay one cent and I will send you a big package of items and samples as a thank-you for your testing and whatever feedback you provide. I will do this for the first 5 people who place a test “order”. After that, I’ll see what further testing is needed.

To find the test item, go to the website and click on “Fragrance” in the menu on the left of the home page. The test item is the last one on the list, and is identified by the same orange rose icon shown in the photo. If you “buy” it, you will be taken through the whole shopping cart procedure (I hope), and I will be notified of your “order”. I will then have your shipping information and can send you your goodie box. Any and all comments regarding the website will be appreciated.

I am excited to move on to this next stage of sharing my creations with the public.

PONDEROSA PINE AND ARIZONA

I first encountered ponderosa pines many years ago when hiking in northern Arizona, in the hills around Prescott. Ponderosa pines are not only beautiful, majestic, awe-inspiring beings, but the mature trees have a special feature. If you put your nose up close to the trunk on a warm, sunny day they give off a fragrance that’s sort of like a mixture of vanilla and tarragon, but has its own special ponderosa pine quality.

Last year I was fortunate enough to find ponderosa pine essential oil for sale. It’s made from the needles, not the trunks of trees in South America, so supposedly “no trees are killed” to make it, although I do have to wonder if it’s a by-product of the lumber industry. The scent is absolutely wonderful, so I was immediately compelled to use it in a perfume, which I have christened Arizona. Ponderosa pine essential oil is fairly volatile, so it acts as a top to mid note in perfumery. I combined it with a base of juniper and resins, added a bouquet of desert plant scents including chaparral and sage, and sweetened it up a tiny bit with mimosa absolute, reminiscent of blooming acacia trees. The result is a wonderfully aromatic blend that is all natural, but strong and long-lasting. I think most people would characterize it as a quintessentially “masculine” scent.

This is going to be one of the initial selection of fragrances that I offer on my website, the beginning of a series that I call “Scents of Place”. After I did a quick and dirty, 5-minutes-in-Photoshop label design for Arizona, I saw that Andy Tauer’s label for L’Air du Desert Marocain is alarmingly similar, so I’ll probably have to modify the Arizona label.

It was a wonderful surprise to find that this all-natural scent’s sillage and longevity are comparable to those of many synthetic fragrances, and that the perfume essence works beautifully to scent soap. Many natural oils have a way of evaporating out of soap even before it’s used, so have to be supplemented with synthetics. The ponderosa pine oil, combined with the other oils that are in Arizona, seems very stable. At my house we’re currently using Arizona soap made months ago, and it not only scents the air while showering, it leaves a light scent on the skin afterwards.

[The ponderosa pine photo is from Wikimedia and shows an oddly shaped specimen]

PHOTOGRAPHING PLANTS AND PERFUMES

One of the tasks I have to do as a purveyor of orchid plants and a soon-to-be purveyor of perfumes is photograph the subjects so that the buyer has a realistic visual impression of what he or she is getting. Over the years I’ve developed a set of techniques for photographing flowers and plants using an inexpensive automatic camera (Canon Powershot A520). Although many of the same principles apply, photographing perfumes and other inanimate products presents some different challenges, which I’m in the process of working through.

The first thing I quickly learned about both types of photography is that flash is the ultimate evil. I prefer to have the subject in natural light in my sunroom, preferably on a very cloudy day (the great gel in the sky, as one film person I know calls clouds). Often the clouds produce the perfect lighting conditions - medium strong uniform light, no visible shadows. Sometimes it’s too bright, so I create a “light tent” using a white drape above the subject or wait until the sun is low in the sky, behind the trees. I suppose I could go out and buy a lot of fancy lighting equipment, but so far nature and a white sheet has worked well in this respect.


My camera has a “flower” setting that I use for both orchids and perfumes. It’s a cheap and dirty substitute for a closeup lens. It works fairly well for most things except tiny flowers against a deep background.

The second thing I learned the hard way was that I need a background that isn’t shiny. Velvet would seem like the best possible drape, but if there are any folds at all they catch the light and shine. The top photo was taken against velvet, and you can see light reflecting from a small fold at the left side of the picture. The lower photo was taken against black fleece. I like black fleece for the orchids, since it isn’t reflective. The downside is that it tends to collect bits of debris, but Photoshop is a wonderful cleanup tool for this sort of thing. Nearly all flowers look wonderful against a black background, perfumes not so much. I’m currently trying a couple of different white backgrounds, a gauzy white curtain and a plain white sheet. I think the white sheet is going to be the winner.

There’s not too much I can say about composition, except that it’s something that you achieve through trial and error and trusting your eye. I often prop the orchid plants up in bizarre positions to show off the flowers to the best advantage and get the right mug shot. I drape their ugly plastic pots with black fleece. Perfumes are a little easier, since they’re not odd-shaped, sprawling about, or jiggling in the slightest breeze. I usually take a dozen shots of everything, in slightly different positions and from slightly different angles, in order to get the best possible shot. Cropping is my friend.

Photography, like everything else, is a continual learning process. As I work to get my perfumes documented for the website, I’m sure I’ll learn more about photographing that sort of still life composition and will share any interesting insights that I have.