SPRING FLOWERS: Narcissus, Hyacinth & Tulip
Best in Show

by Elena Prokofeva, John Biebel, Matvey Yudov
04/09/22 19:31:01 ( 30 comments )

The bright riot of color that erupts from the formerly drab and dried grass is, of course, a reminder of the continuity of the seasons, but I feel that the reminder is very necessary. The Taoists often see the garden of winter as a symbol of potentiality, much like our spring flowers. They begin as dormant bulbs buried deep in the ground, nestled coldly in the dirt. From the outside, we only see dried leaves and branches. But held inside those bulbs, rhizomes and seeds all the required biological information needed to fill the garden again. Forsythia, lilac, Turkish tulips, lily of the valley, primrose, sweet peas, delicate and sturdy in alternating ways, all offer special fragrance that is quintessentially spring - lightly floral, green with the smell of fresh stems, earthy, mildly spicy, and effervescent. With so many amazing flowers to celebrate in this season, Mat, Elena and I have gathered together our thoughts on the flowers of spring, some of the details about what make them smell as great as they do, and the perfumes that depict them. Please join us in your thoughts about spring flowers and their perfumes in the comments below.

INTRODUCTION BY JOHN BIEBEL

BY JOHN BIEBEL

Hyacinths are a genus of perennial bulbous plants native to the Mediterranean. They have been bred in Europe since about the XV century and more than 300 varieties of these ornamental plants are now known. 

The scent of the hyacinth is very characteristic and sort of fundamental, it is very difficult to break it down. The fragrance of a blooming hyacinth can be very roughly described as green, floral, bitter, with honey-like, spicy, and chocolate nuances. Phenylacetaldehyde gives hyacinth its unique and strong, earthy/chocolate/green/sweet, and somehow wine-like aspect. Other important ingredients that form this fragrance are benzyl acetate (one of the key odorants of jasmine), rose-scented phenyl ethyl alcohol and its esters, balsamic benzyl benzoate, indole, "mushroom alcohol" 1-octen-3-ol, terpenes (including farnesene and ocimene, giving a certain citrus petitgrain nuance) and trimethoxybenzene with a rather strange medical animalistic odor.

BY MAT YUDOV
 

Hyacinth is the first flower I think about when spring comes to my mind - the strong, uplifting smell of its flowers has always summoned a slumbering soul. To see the flower's thick stems jut out so dramatically and firmly from the brown and white bulbs always strikes me as a wonder of botanical architecture: How do they manage to say upright? And yet they do, sometimes becoming so heavy as they grow that they do indeed begin to droop slightly as if the weight of their own perfume is pulling them earthward. The smell of hyacinths can overcome those in their vicinity that they don't often make the best houseplants, and, like lilies, soon smother out all the air. They are, in a phrase, not modest.

Perfumery has often strived to duplicate the smell of hyacinth with differing levels of success. It was, for many decades, considered to be an old-fashioned flower, more akin to early 20th century perfumes, regaining popularity here and there in certain perfumes like Chanel No 19 (the classic green floral which utilizes other spring flowers like lily of the valley and narcissus.) Patou, in its Heritage Collection of reissues, featured a combination of hyacinth and lilac in its bracing fresh floral perfume Vacances. This latter beauty is unmistakably of its time, robust with styrax and musk and a bold streak of galbanum at the top to set a very green stage for development. An 80s fragrance that defined the apex of perceived femininity and floral-centered smells was Cacharel's Anais-Anais, which put together hyacinth, white lily, jasmine, rose and orange blossom to make its piercing, bright floral signature.

In more recent times, hyacinth has returned and has been reassessed and folded into new perfumes in new and interesting ways, still offering the same fascinating facets that make it bold and sweetly unique, but also accenting its inherent terpenic side and touches of decay as the blossoms fade off. Serge Lutens' Bas de Soie, with its mixture of hyacinth and iris (and the very popular galbanum making a recurrent showing), explores a darker side of the flower. As it blooms on the skin, it quickly moves into deeper, damper territory where spices emerge with a complex musk backdrop. Hyacinth is no longer just sweet and pretty; it is animalic, tuberous, alive. Equally complex was the original Givenchy III, originally released in 1970 (as was Chanel No 19). That composition, now to be found only in auction houses, was a kitchen sink of aldehydes, sandalwood, oakmoss, myrrh, peaches, gardenia blossoms, carnations, and, of course, hyacinth. In the early 20th century, Givency rereleased a number of their former perfumes in the series called Les Parfums Mythiques. This version of Givenchy III is a somewhat stripped-down version of the original, but for our purposes of appreciating hyacinth in perfumes, it's actually a solid example. Here, hyacinth is given more prominence and shares less of the space with so many different flower accords. Now, it's accompanied only by galbanum, rose, jasmine, oakmoss, and patchouli. What arises is something made from equal parts of lovely and refreshing - It begins as a softly powdered scent, impressed with a radiant, sun-filled image of hyacinth in its first bloom. After an hour, it grows more transparent, abstract, feathery, and mossy. It does a kind of reversal and ends on a note of earthy freshness, much like the smell of earth that's been broken with a shovel mixed with sweet grass and nearby flower blossoms.

In 2014, the New York based Joya studio created a fragrance called Foxglove (a bit ironic, since foxgloves do not have a scent, but are such powerful medical plants and are highly toxic) but their tall, stately blooms on long stems have captivated gardeners for centuries. The imagined fragrance of the foxglove is created with a strong note of hyacinth mixed together with blood orange, cedar, green grass, jasmine, narcissus, and musk. It's a very different approach to the use of hyacinth in that it has milker, woodier qualities than the other examples, more like what you'd expect to find from flowers caught in the wild, with their inherent roughness still mingling in their stems and leaves. It's a fascinating re-imagining of what hyacinths can be in this century, viewed through our modern sensibilities, but still embracing that particular bold freshness so important to the character of spring's hyacinth.

BY ELENA PROKOFEVA

Narcissus or daffodil is a bulbous plant in the Amaryllis family. Like many other plants in this family, daffodils have an intense-sweet-intoxicating fragrance, which, incidentally, is most likely the reason for their name — the word comes from the same Greek root narcosis. Daffodils are commonly considered to be native to the meadows and forests of southern Europe and the western Mediterranean, with a particularly rich variety of wild species of daffodils in the Iberian Peninsula.

There are no characteristic odorants responsible for the fragrance of narcissus — it is formed from a number of various compounds. Among the key components worth mentioning are trans-β-ocymene (woody-floral smell), α-farnesene (green herbaceous-citrus smell with nuances of lavender and apple), p-dimethoxybenzene (sweet herbaceous smell with tobacco and earthy nuances), indole (heavy narcotic floral smell reminiscent of jasmine), benzyl acetate (fresh jasmine floral smell), methylbenzoate (ylang-ylang, pear, almond), phenylethyl alcohol (rose), and linalool oxide (floral, green). 

BY MAT YUDOV
 

I am in love with daffodils, with the cold sharp smell of its petals, with the watery green smell of their stems and the honey spicy sensual sweetness hidden in the depth of the flower.

I am in love with their victorious delicacy of early spring. Daffodils bloom in sunny spots when the weather is still cold and snow lies in the shade. Maybe that's why their fragrance seems to have something sunny and at the same something snowy?

I adore their grace. I like all their colors and shapes, but, perhaps, the classic white ones with a golden crown inside I love the most.

There are not as many fragrances with a leading narcissus as I would wish, and some of the best have been discontinued, for example, Le Temps d’Une Fête Nicolaï Parfumeur Créateur and Ostara Penhaligon's. But all lovers of narcissus can still enjoy the ingenious Romanza Masque Milano. I would also suggest to all seeking their ideal flower, to try Jonquille Thé Musc et Madame.

Jonquille is also narcissus, but of a different kind. From a botanical point of view, it belongs to the genus Narcissus, but the narcissus has only one flower per stem, while the jonquil has several and they are smaller. Jonquils smell stronger than daffodils, and also warmer and sweeter, their fragrance is dominated by that sensual, animalistic note that the daffodil crown exudes.

Jonquille Thé Musc et Madame smells like jonquilles and daffodils planted together. I also smell sweet hyacinth in this spring garden. All flowers appear in bright sunlight. I don't smell the whiteness of daffodils' petals in Jonquille Thé, but only their gold. It starts with orange blossom, mimosa and blooming linden. There is a lot of yellow pollen, a sip of icy orange juice, and a handful of snow that smells of frosty sweetness but melts fast.

Jonquille Thé develops and changes swiftly. It becomes honey-sweet and spicy. Tobacco and leather notes, characteristic of tobacco absolute, start to appear, as well as hot, indolic, shameful animalic note that is a part of jonquil and daffodils natural scent. In Jonquille Thé, it's concentrated to the limit – it flows like honey and shimmers like fossiled amber, it flashes with the yellow eye of a panther, it breaths with its warm breath of carnivore, softly touches with its fur. This is not a beautiful young man, Narcissus, dying of love for his reflection, but a panther, luring prey with its sweetly smelling breath.

At this moment, when we are convinced of its sensual ferocity, pale green notes start to grow through its animalic honey. They are young and self-conscious like first spring flowers, but they are also fresh and undeniable. At first, the animalic accord doesn't want to yield to their green onset, it fiercely resists, but then, suddenly, Jonquille's heart explodes with pollen and freshness, everything merges together and spins in a whirlwind of frantic Spring, Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring.

The honey thickens, becomes less caustic and sweeter, turns into the pulp of ripe apricots. Evening descends on the spring garden. Twilight smells of daffodils and wet earth. And finally, there is tea, from the name to the perfume. Evening tea, black, strongly brewed, with honey and osmanthus. Jonquille Thé becomes softer, rounder, velvety, blissful... But the panther didn't go anywhere. She is here. Warm. A strong young beast. She purrs loving the flower smells around. Grumbles from the enjoyment of floral aromas and peace. The scent of Jonquille Thé Musc et Madame is like the low, vibrating purr of a big cat.

BY MAT YUDOV

Tulips is a genus of perennial bulbous plants in the lily family (lat. Liliaceae), this genus is quite large and includes more than 80 species. Tulips appeared in the mountains of northern Iran, on the coast of the Tethys — a relict sea in the center of modern Eurasia.

A key role in tulip scent formation playing monoterpenoids (eucalyptol, linalool, d-limonene, trans-β-octimene and α-pinene), sesquiterpenoids (caryophyllene, α-farnesene, geranyl acetone and β-ionone), benzene derivatives (acetophenone, benzaldehyde, benzyl alcohol, 3,5-dimethoxytoluene, methyl salicylate and phenylethyl alcohol) and fatty acid derivatives (octanal, decanal, 2-hexenal, cis-3-hexenol and cis-3-hexenyl acetate).

BY MAT YUDOV
 

More than once I have encountered the opinion that tulips do not smell at all. This is nonsense of course: tulips may not smell as intense as, say, jasmine, but they are extremely versatile and offer the perfumer with an imagination a lot of unexpected ideas. Hardly anyone would dispute that tulips are beautiful and very ornamental: there are about 10,000 varieties of tulips, and it must be said that they all smell very different.

"Absent" tulip aroma I would schematically describe as resembling a lily, but with a pronounced spicy character (close to saffron: slightly bitter, a little medical, "iodine"), with aromatic tobacco facets and a sweet and intoxicating honey tone.

In my article I once wrote about the great diversity of tulip fragrance. Botanists call a set of plants of the same biological species, which are very similar in appearance and have a different ability to produce certain substances, including fragrant ones, a chemotype. There are nine such varieties of tulips, fundamentally differing in smell: anisic, citrusy, fruity, green, aromatic, spicy, rosy, honey-like, woody. 

I have never once come across a realistic tulip in a perfume composition, not one profile out of at least nine possible. Byredo La Tulipe, Aura of Kazakhstan Land of Tulips, Brocard Tulip and Mimosa, Atkinsons Tulipe Noire – all of them are very nice, but pretty far from being realistic. It was the image of a bouquet of tulips that you hold with chilling unyielding fingers, standing in the piercing March wind, that I kept in mind when discussing with Thomas Fontaine the fragrance for Faberlic, which later became known as Jolie Jolie. Perhaps Le Galion Tulipe, which is also made by Thomas Fontaine, is one of my favorite scents on the subject.

Maybe for perfumery, a discipline that is "highly artistic" and somewhat highbrow, the smell of the tulip is too lively and real.

I have been trying to make a tulip accord myself for a long time. I have been going back to the sketches under the working title "Tote Tulpen" from time to time for at least ten years now. This name is taken from a song by And One, Steve Naghavi was inspired by Depeche Mode's Black Celebration (Black Tulip Mix), judging by the samples in the beginning of this live version, and they in turn probably recalled the novel by Alexandre Dumas - here comes a funny recursion.

Of all the fragrances in which you can see tulip notes, Cartier Carat is probably the closest to me. It fits perfectly with the period of early spring, the thawing of the earth. Tulips in this fragrance are very speculative, for me it is more about the right mood, the feeling of renewal, elation and anticipation of something important.

The proportions of green notes, freshness, watery facets, waxy floral petals, and juicy fruit are perfect in this fragrance for me. Carat is infinitely positive, it flirts with perfume patterns, but rather as if it makes fun of them: the fragrance does not become "overly perfumed", does not get covered in feathers of musk or flooded with decorative cosmetics. It's probably the best fragrance for early spring.