Freesia
Fresh, dewy flowers with a light peppery sweetness and a clean, airy feel.
You may know it from A bouquet of fresh freesia flowers
Where it comes from
Usually recreated with aroma chemicals; freesia flowers do not provide a practical perfume extract.
Worth knowing
Freesia perfume is a reconstruction, not oil distilled from the flower.
About freesia
Freesia belongs to the iris family and grows from a small conical corm. The genus is native to the eastern side of southern Africa, and most species are found in the Cape provinces of South Africa. The freesias sold by florists descend from crosses made in the 19th century between Freesia refracta and Freesia leichtlinii.
The scent of the living flower cannot be captured with a solvent, so there is no freesia absolute or essential oil to buy. Perfumers build the note in the lab from other ingredients, or reproduce it with headspace technology, which samples the fragrance of the living bloom. Perfume Shrine describes the synthesized version as plenty of linalool with hints of jasmine-type synthetics and green notes. A perfumer-blogger gives a similar base of linalool, a little beta-ionone and traces of green. The same blogger reports that a 1% beta-ionone solution on a blotter smelled close to a freesia flower.
Descriptions of the smell differ. One glossary calls it peppery-sweet and faintly citrus. The Osmoz encyclopedia writes of a luminous scent like jasmine or orange blossom, with fruity accents.
Antonia's Flowers (1984), composed by Bernard Chant at IFF using headspace technology on live blooms, is the perfume Perfume Shrine names as the start of the freesia trend. That site says it became a cult favourite and set off a wave of freesia-note fragrances. Ready-made freesia bases also exist for perfumers. IFF's Freesia Fleuriff is listed as a bright, fresh, floral scent, with a usage limit of up to 10% in the concentrate.
Accords it shows up in
How many of the fragrances listing Freesia in our catalogue also carry each accord. We counted this ourselves.
Often paired with
The notes that appear next to Freesia most often in our catalogue.
Well-known fragrances with Freesia
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 Freesia.