African Orange Flower
Sweet orange blossom with creamy white petals, honeyed freshness, and a faint green bitterness.
You may know it from Orange blossom water
Where it comes from
Steam-distilled from bitter orange tree blossoms grown in Africa.
Worth knowing
It is blossom, not the smell of orange fruit.
About african orange flower
The African part of this name has a short list of countries behind it. Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt are the leading producers of neroli, which is distilled from the same bitter orange blossom. One glossary puts the centre of Tunisian production on the Cap Bon peninsula around Nabeul.
The picking starts early. According to that glossary, the flowers must be harvested by hand before sunrise, when volatile oil content peaks. It also gives the yield of neroli as roughly 850 to 1,000 kg of flowers for 1 kg of oil, or 0.07 to 0.12 percent.
Two molecules shape the absolute. Methyl anthranilate occurs naturally in orange blossom and neroli, and also in jasmine, bergamot and Concord grape. Smelled on its own, it is sweet and grape-like. A supplier of Tunisian absolute credits it together with indole for a narcotic, honeyed warmth that appears as the scent develops.
Scentspiracy, which sells that absolute, warns that the methyl anthranilate in it can discolour in alkaline bases, especially alongside aldehydes. Schiff bases made from the molecule have a related complaint. Aurantiol, discovered in 1908, gives an orange blossom and neroli character, yet compounds of this kind have become less common in modern perfumery, in part because of the strong colour many of them produce.
The same supplier states that IFRA limits this absolute to 0.7 percent in fine fragrance under the 51st Amendment, Category 4.
Accords it shows up in
How many of the fragrances listing African Orange Flower in our catalogue also carry each accord. We counted this ourselves.
Often paired with
The notes that appear next to African Orange Flower most often in our catalogue.
Well-known fragrances with African Orange Flower
Fragrances that list it in their notes, most-rated first.
Houses that use it most
Ranked by how many of their well-known fragrances list African Orange Flower.