Labdanum Absolute

Labdanum is almost animalic in intensity, very deep dark, warm and sweet but dry and amber like. Perfumery

Product Information

Cistus ladaniferus

Cistaceae family

Wild Harvested and solvent extracted from the oleoresin from the flowering plants, on a farm, in Spain.

 Cistus ladanifer is a flowering plant native to the western Mediterranean. Its leaves yield an oleoresin, and that is what we are talking about here.

When you read about the differences between cistus oil and labdanum oil, it can be confusing. They are the same in that both come from cistus ladiferus plants. But basically, cistus oil is steam distilled from the plant. Whereas labdanum is extracted from the oleoresin that is pervious separated out form the plant. If you boil the cistus plants, and extract the oleoresin, and then distill that, then you have the absolute. If you have some questions about the minutae of cistus/labdanum extraction, I suggest you peruse Arctander’s book, Perfume and Flavor Materials of Natural Origin.

Labdanum is almost animalic in intensity, very deep dark, warm and sweet but dry and amber like.

Arctander says

Labdanum absolute is a semi solid, soft, but very sticky and non-pourable mass of olive-green, green, and amber-green color. The odor is deep, sweet-balsamic, faintly but persistently herbaceous with an ambra-like, rich undertone.

This oil is used mostly in perfumery, partly as a fixative,  partly to introduce a rich, suave sweetness and natural undertone, which blends well with citrus-colognes, lavender-colognes, all kinds of Oriental bases, chypres, amber bases, pine, and forest blends.

It blends well with oakmoss, clary sage, bergamot, lavender, lavandin, pine, citrus ionones (orris), etc.

Song from Paracelsus

Heap cassia, sandal-buds and stripes

Of labdanum, and aloe-balls,

Smeared with dull nard an Indian wipes

From out her hair: such balsam falls

Down sea-side mountain pedestals,

From tree-tops where tired winds are fain,

Spent with the vast and howling main,

To treasure half their island-gain. 

And strew faint sweetness from some old

Egyptian's fine worm-eaten shroud

Which breaks to dust when once unrolled;

Or shredded perfume, like a cloud

From closet long to quiet vowed,

With mothed and dropping arras hung,

Mouldering her lute and books among,

As when a queen, long dead, was young.

---Robert Browning