Litchi
Juicy sweet tropical fruit with a rosy, lightly tart freshness.
You may know it from Fresh lychee fruit or canned lychees
Where it comes from
Recreated with aroma chemicals; lychee fruit yields no standard perfume extract.
Botanical name: Litchi chinensis
Worth knowing
It usually suggests lychee rather than using juice or fruit extract.
About litchi
Lychee is the only species in the genus Litchi, a member of the soapberry family, and the part people eat is the juicy, translucent aril. The fresh fruit has a floral aroma often described as rose-like. Linalool, geraniol, nerol, limonene and cis-rose oxide have been found in the flesh, contributing rose-like and citrus-like notes. Furaneol adds a sweet, caramel-like tone, methional a cooked-potato nuance, and sulfur volatiles such as dimethyl trisulfide add to it.
Lychee essential oil does not exist in the traditional sense, according to Perfume Cultures, so the note is reconstructed. Sources differ on the ingredients. A reference page from CA Perfume names cis-rose oxide, linalool, geraniol and beta-damascenone, with supporting esters and sulfur compounds. Perfumestars points to linalool and citronellal, with natural rose or raspberry sometimes blended in. Bon Parfumeur's journal says the note is built by chemical synthesis, drawing on the fruit's esters, aldehydes, ketones and terpenes. Perfume Cultures describes the job as fruity esters for juiciness, rose-like molecules for floral softness and watery notes for transparency.
CA Perfume says rose absolute shares cis-rose oxide and beta-damascenone with litchi. Perfume-culture sites name rose, peony and jasmine as the flowers that suit it, and Perfumestars cites Byredo Rose of No Man's Land as an example of lychee over a rose heart. Lychee is treated as a top note that can carry into the heart alongside florals. It is rarely used as a base note.
The fruit itself has a short season. China is the largest producer and India second, and in Vietnam the fruit is on the market for only about two months a year.
Accords it shows up in
How many of the fragrances listing Litchi in our catalogue also carry each accord. We counted this ourselves.
Often paired with
The notes that appear next to Litchi most often in our catalogue.
Well-known fragrances with Litchi
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 Litchi.