What is the Perfume Project?

This blog is a constantly evolving forum for thoughts on perfume, perfume-making, plants (especially orchids and flora of the Pacific Northwest) and life in general. It started out chronicling the adventures of Olympic Orchids Perfumes, established in July 2010, and has expanded in other directions. A big part of the blog is thinking about the ongoing process of learning and experimentation that leads to new perfumes, the exploration of perfumery materials, the theory and practice of perfume making, the challenges of marketing perfumes and other fragrance products, and random observations on philosophy and society. Spam comments will be marked as such and deleted; any comments that go beyond the boundaries of civil discourse will also be deleted. I am grateful to all of you, the readers, who contribute to the blog by commenting and making this a truly interactive perfume project.

Monday, March 7, 2011

THE UGLIEST ORCHID PLANT


When it comes to orchid plants, Chysis bractescens has to be one of the ugliest ones around. It has long, thick pseudobulbs about the length and diameter of a grocery store cucumber, but pointed at both ends and segmented where the leaves are or were, mostly were. Each new growth comes up from the side of the previous one so that the plant keeps growing vertically instead of horizontally, stacking one pseudobulb on top of another until it becomes an unwieldy, out-of-control mess. Generally, the pseudobulbs lose their leaves after a year or two, so that only one or two growths actually have leaves. But when it flowers, in early spring, the display is gorgeous, both visually and fragrance-wise, turning the ugly duckling into a swan. This year’s flowers just started to open this weekend.

The flowers grow from the base of the new growth, starting at the same time and developing in parallel with the new pseudobulb. The stubby flower spike bears a half-dozen or so big, waxy, ivory-white flowers that are typical orchid shape and wonderfully fragrant. The thing blooms like clockwork every year. The fragrance is smooth and creamy, almost gourmand, with lots of vanilla, a little caramel, and slight notes of lilac and jasmine. Unlike many other orchids, there’s nothing indolic about it, it’s just sweet and clean, like a creamy, vanilla-flavored dessert. It’s a wonderful scent, but too similar to a lot of gourmand fragrances to warrant a perfume of its own.

Chysis bractescens is one of those orchids that looks like it ought to be hard to grow, but isn’t. It can take all sorts of abuse and still thrive. One of these days I ought to give it a stick or tree fern pole to climb up, but until then it can stay crammed into its tiny plastic pot that sits at a 45 degree angle in a big, heavy, ceramic pot to keep it from tipping over.

1 comment:

  1. The blooms are gorgeous. I must say, my ideas of what an orchid smells like don't involve caramel! Smelling it would be a little trick on my mind, like picking up the milk carton thinking it's full when it's actually empty and it goes flying!

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