Neroli tree mystery

[Guest guest]

For years, I've questioned why C. aurantium var. amara was named as the

source of neroli in all the AT books. I studied at a Citrus Research

Center and two of my professors there were among the authors of the

industry Bibles, The Citrus Industry Vols. 1-4. I was taught that C.

aurantium var. Bouquet des Fleurs was the source of neroli. We had a

beautiful stand of the small, rounded trees growing on campus. Early one

Sunday morning, my husband and I went down the row, bucket in hand,

vodka in bucket, harvesting as many flowers as possible. It was heavenly!

 

For years, however, in my dyslexic way, I reversed the name. I called it

Fleurs des Bouquet, and I couldn't find any reference to it. I've since

lost my Citrus Industry books on moves, and didn't bother to call back

to the University of CA, Riverside to check. I figured maybe the variety

I remembered came down with a disease, and the amara replaced it in the

industry. After all, one book after another, one supplier after another

named the amara as the neroli source.

 

I had a meeting today with a student and colleague who is moving forward

with a grant to look into developing distillation projects here in

Florida. Neroli came up. I spoke of my confusion with the AT books and

suppliers.

 

When I went online to google FdB, all I came up with was a post by

myself on a perfumery blog in 2005. I figured something was wrong if not

one other hit came up with that name. I googled citrus aurantium

varoetoes bouquet neroli and the skies parted and the sun came out.

 

One source after another names Bouquet des Fleurs as the source of neroli.

 

Kind of like the puzzle with the geraniums recently addressed here, but

closer to my heart, since I've been wondering what's up all these years.

I'm not saying that amara isn't one name for it, but why does everyone

cite it as the only source? BdF was #1 according to the old professors,

and they were German and quite sure of themselves ;-) I'm German, too,

but quite unsure of myself where all this is concerned, lol.

 

Here's some pages, and of course, you may find some other info

independently.

 

The first site cites my alma mater, UCR:

http://www.bayflora.com/citrustrees.html

http://users.kymp.net/citruspages/souroranges.html#bouquetier

This site mentions production in Haiti and I believe it says BdF and

amara may be synonyms (they call the cultivars Bouquetier):

http://www.worldagroforestrycentre.org/SEA/Products/AFDbases/AF/asp/SpeciesInfo.\

asp?SpID=18105

http://www.prcupcc.org/herbs/herbsn/neroli.htm

Ah, from UCR!

http://lib.ucr.edu/agnic/webber/Vol1/Chapter4.html

 

It's just the beauty and memory of those trees at Riverside that had me

cling on to the hope that I could unearth something about their name.

Can anybody help? Bouquet de Fleurs (even reversed as I had it) is such

a romantic name, and is it possible it's the true, historic name?

 

--

All my best,

http://NaturalPerfumers.com

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