Honeysuckle
Sweet flower nectar with creamy white petals, a green stemmy freshness, and a light fruity touch.
You may know it from a honeysuckle vine flowering in a garden
Where it comes from
Usually built from aroma chemicals because honeysuckle flowers provide no practical perfume extract.
Botanical name: Lonicera
About honeysuckle
Honeysuckle is the common name of a whole genus, Lonicera, with 158 accepted species native to northern latitudes in North America, Eurasia and North Africa. Many of them carry sweetly scented flowers that produce an edible nectar.
The species most often discussed for scent is Japanese honeysuckle, Lonicera japonica. Its flowers open white and fade to yellow, so blooms of both colours share one vine. In a 2022 study the freshly opened white stage was chosen as the one with the strongest aroma. That same plant has become an invasive species in parts of North America, Europe, South America, New Zealand, Australia and Africa.
Analysis of its flowers found 243 volatile compounds, with terpenoids and esters making up 57.2% of the total. The study singled out geraniol, alpha-terpineol, farnesol, alpha-farnesene and methyl anthranilate. A perfume blog gives a different emphasis, putting linalool at about 11% and farnesol at 26 to 51%. Composition shifts with variety and with the age of the bloom, so the figures are hard to pin to one number.
Perfumedom describes the scent as sweet, floral and slightly fruity, lighter and airier than jasmine or gardenia, and says it is mostly used in heart accords.
Hydroxycitronellal, an aroma chemical, smells sweet, floral and lily-like, with green, waxy and slight melon and citrus undertones. It is listed under entry 72 of Annex III to the EU Cosmetics Regulation as a regulated fragrance allergen.
Accords it shows up in
How many of the fragrances listing Honeysuckle in our catalogue also carry each accord. We counted this ourselves.
Often paired with
The notes that appear next to Honeysuckle most often in our catalogue.
Well-known fragrances with Honeysuckle
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 Honeysuckle.