Karo-Karoundé Absolute

#### Karo-Karoundé. The flowers of a small west-African shrub related to gardenia, have been used by the natives for a long time to perfume linen, hair oils, baths, etc. It is just one of many west African fragrant flowers, but this plant happens to grow in the region of Guinea where several essential oils have already been produced on a large, commercial scale by French companies. The plant **Leptactina Senegambica **grows wild in the mountainous region called Fouta-Djalon in Guinea, southeast of the Senegambia. The shrub is found all the way up in Gambia, and south to the old Ivory Coast. The author also found the plant further south in Congo and other areas of the former A.E.F. However, only at Labé and Mamou in Guinea are there extraction installations capable of processing flowers into concrètes. Occasionally, the concrète is further processed to an absolute by the French people in Guinea, but most often the concrète is shipped to Grasse to be processed. Unfortunately, this is the first step toward the appearance of obviously "compounded" and "sophisticated" absolutes of such rare exotic materials, and it is regrettable that one must state that true karo-karoundé absolutes are offered very rarely from Grasse. The true absolute is, furthermore, very expensive, usually somewhat higher in price than jasmin absolute from concrète. The plant is known by the natives under the name of "kaulathi" or "fara-koronte". The locally produced, petroleum ether extracted concrète is a solid, soft-waxy, dark orange-brown mass, while the absolute is a viscous liquid of chocolate-brown or dark orange-brown color. Its odor is intensely floral, deep-herbaceous and sweet, but somewhat nauseating. The undertone is slightly fruity, very tenacious, and it fades out in a delightful floral- woody, faintly green-herbaceous note. There is a certain similarity to orange flower water absolute, jonquil and jasmin pommade absolute with a peculiar bitter-almond-like undertone. **Karo-Karoundé Absolute **blends excellently with the above materials and with ylang-ylang, narcissus, isoeugenol, cinnamic alcohol, styrax resinoid, galbanum resinoid, undecanolide, clove bud oil or clove bud absolute, phenylethyl alcohol, ar-methyl phenylethyl alcohol, methyl cinnamic alcohol, neryl acetate, heliotropine, mimosa and cassie absolutes, hexyl cinnamic aldehyde, tea leaf absolute, etc. The absolute of karo-karoundé gives very interesting effects in hyacinth, gardenia, stephanotis and tuberose bases and it can be used in a multitude of other heavy-floral or Oriental- floral perfumes. The absolute must be used with care because of its peculiar topnote which reminds of the odor of benzylformate or phenylethyl formate. This note is probably due to the presence of large amounts of phenylacetonitrile (benzyl cyanide) in the volatile part of the absolute. The annual production of karo-karoundé absolute is estimated at less than 100 kilos. A high proportion of this quantity is swallowed up by a few French perfume houses who use this powerful material in some of their "grands parfums".