Gardenia

#### Gardenia. The gardenia shrub, **Gardenia Grandiflora **(and other gardenias), is quite common as an ornamental plant in subtropical and warm-temperate zones of the world. The flowers of this plant have been known and admired for their outstanding fragrance for thousands of years. However, these flowers are rarely submitted to extraction for the isolation of essential oil, concrète or absolute. One reason is the very small yield (about 1 kilo of absolute from 5000 kilos of flowers). Another reason is the limited use of the gardenia type of fragrance in perfumery. Finally, this type of fragrance has been comparatively easy to copy, although a good artificial gardenia base is more rare than for example a good artificial muguet base (lily-of-the-valley). Incidentally, a close resemblance to the natural product is not synonymous with unexcelled performance in a perfume. A concrète of **Gardenia**** **flowers was produced many years ago in the Indian Ocean island of **La**** ****Réunion **when the French extraction expert, Charles Gamier established himself with his world-famous equipment on that island. Production in La Réunion has been abandoned long ago. Various sorts of **Gardenia**** ****Absolutes **are occasionally offered on the market today. Some of these may actually derive from Grasse factories, but quite recently, Chinese and Formosan producers have offered **Gardenia Concrète **in Europe and India. The Chinese gardenia concrète is presumably derived from the flowers of **Gardenia**** ****Florida** which is a native of southeastern China. **Gardenia**** ****Grandiflora**** **is grown in China for its fruits which yield Wong-Shi, a yellow colorant. Other varieties grow in Japan, in the Philippines, Indonesia, India, the West Indies, etc., but they are rarely utilized for perfume extraction. It serves no purpose to describe here outdated samples of true gardenia absolute when this material is no more in regular production. Samples of Chinese and Formosan gardenia concrète submitted to the author were of comparatively weak perfume effect. They were pale orange or amber colored, waxy masses of fatty-floral, somewhat fresh-green odor with a tuberose-like, sweet undertone, faintly reminiscent of the fragrance of the gardenia flower, but with heavy emphasis on the leafy-green notes. **Gardenia**** ****Absolute**** **was used for its intense and rich, floral effect and its peculiar sweet-green note. However, artificial gardenia perfume bases have now replaced the true and very expensive absolute from the flowers.