Lily Absolute

#### Lilium Candidum. The popular and very beautiful madonna lily or "White Lily", **Lilium**** ****Candidum**** **originated in the Middle Fast, and is now grown for its flowers in Europe, particularly in the south of France. Bulgaria also grows substantial amounts, and experimental batches of perfume oil have been produced there. Only rarely are surplus flowers treated in Grasse, France, to yield an **Absolute of Lily **(absolue de lys). According to private communications to the author, the maximum annual production of **Lily Absolute **in France has been about 2 kilos. These products were of dark orange-yellow color or pale amber color and very viscous liquids. The odor is usually delicately floral with a pronounced oily-waxy topnote. The balsamic-sweet body is reminiscent of narcissus and boronia, also faintly of karo-karoundé. It is less green in odor than these but more fatty balsamic or cinnamic. There are notes which distinctly recall beta ionone, and the undertone is almost "jam"-like sweet, reminiscent of figs or plums. The odor is extremely tenacious and uniform, never pungent. It would offer interesting twists to jasmin or neroli fragrances, and it blends excellently with violet bases, cassie, mimosa, etc. The flowers of the madonna lily (erroneously called "Easter Lily") have a very sweet, heavy floral, honeylike fragrance with a short cresylic, ylang-ylang-like topnote and, at other times of the day, a suave, balsamic-sweet fragrance. A true **Lilium**** ****Candidum**** ****Absolute**** **would undoubtedly find application in high-class perfumes as an interesting modifier and "bouquetting" material for floral or aldehydic bases, perhaps even in the heavier perfume types. Small quantities of true absolute of lilium candidum can always be made available upon reasonable notice. The material is not regularly produced in France. A local variety of the lily is grown in Bermuda and other sunny west-Atlantic islands, and the flowers are treated by the enfleurage method in a perfume factory. Because a very large amount of synthetic perfume materials is imported to these islands, the author prefers not to describe Bermudan Lily "pommade"-absolute as a natural perfume material.