Japan (native), China, Korea, Taiwan. Naturalised: Mediterranean basin (Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Tunisia, Morocco), California, Australia, New Zealand. No commercial extraction anywhere.
Pyramid
Heart
Orange blossom trapped in a hedge. A waxy, narcotic-sweet scent that ambushes you on Mediterranean sidewalks in late spring — heavier than jasmine, greener than tuberose, with a citrus-peel brightness underneath that keeps it from cloying.
Waxy, narcotic, and sweet — the first impression is orange blossom, but heavier and with more body. A jasmine-tea quality sits underneath: indolic, slightly animalic, with the buttery warmth of tuberose. Fresher than frangipani, less sharp than neroli. A green, almost peel-like citrus note threads through the sweetness and prevents it from becoming oppressive. On a warm evening, the scent off a flowering hedge is almost dizzying — more diffusive than gardenia, less clean than magnolia. The dry-down, if captured, would be waxy, powdery, faintly herbaceous.
Evolution over time
Immediately
Immediately
Bright citrus-peel opening with immediate white-floral sweetness. Orange blossom clarity, green and slightly waxy. The diffusion is extreme — the scent projects before you identify it.
After a few hours
After a few hours
The narcotic jasmine-tuberose body emerges. Heavier, more indolic, with a buttery warmth. The citrus note recedes but doesn't vanish entirely. Waxy, powdery, and increasingly animalic.
After a few days
After a few days
A faint, waxy-powdery residue. Sweet but dry. Given the low molecular weight of the dominant volatiles (n-nonane, alpha-pinene), tenacity on skin is limited — the flower's apparent power comes from diffusion rate, not persistence.
Terroir & Origins
Indicative 2025 wholesale prices.
The Full Story
Pittosporum tobir a is an persistent shrub native to southern Japan, coastal Chin a, Taiwan, and Kore a. The small, creamy-white flowers — barely two centimetres across — produce a disproportionately powerful fragrance that carries for metres. The genus name comes from the Greek pitt a (pitch) and sporos (seed): the seeds are coated in a sticky resinous substance. The comm on name 'Japanese mock orange' is accurate — the scent does recall Citrus sinens is blossom, but with a heavier, more narcotic floral body.
The volatile chemistry is unusual and varies dramatically by growing region. Flower oil from Iran (Sajjadi et al., 2004) is dominated by alpha-pinene (38.6%), n-nonane (11.8%), and (E)-nerolidol (9.0%). In Portugal (Rodrigues et al., 2007), n-nonane overwhelms at 26–68%, with myrcene second. In Tunisia (Kahlaoui et al., 2024), viridiflorol dominates flower volatiles at 31.6%, followed by (E)-nerolidol at 13.3% and alpha-cadinol at 9.1%. This geographic variability — a monoterpene-dominant profile in Iran, a hydrocarbon-dominant one in Portugal, a sesquiterpene-dominant one in Tunisia — makes pittosporum an unusually terroir-sensitive species.
There is no commercially available pittosporum absolute or essential oil at perfumery grade. The flower is classified as a 'silent flower' — one whose scent cannot be economically extracted by distillation or solvent methods. In practice, perfumers reconstruct pittosporum using headspace analysis data and synthetic accords: typically built around linalool, methyl benzoate, indole, and nerolidol to approximate the jasmine-orange blossom-tuberose character, with n-nonane or light hydrocarbons for the waxy green lift.
The plant has naturalized so aggressively across the Mediterranean, California, and parts of Australia that many assume it is native. It flowers from April to June in the Northern Hemisphere. A single bush in bloom perfumes an entire street — the diffusion is extreme, closer to orange blossom than to most white florals.
This note in Première Peau. Nuit Elastique · Rose Monotone. Sample all seven extraits in the Discovery Set.
Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander coined the genus name Pittosporum during Captain Cook's first Pacific voyage on the Endeavour (1769–1770), from the Greek pitta (pitch) and sporos (seed) — describing the sticky resin coating the seeds. The name remained unpublished until Joseph Gaertner formally described the genus in 1788 in De Fructibus et Seminibus Plantarum.
Extraction & Chemistry
Extraction method: No commercial extraction exists at perfumery grade. Pittosporum tobira is a 'silent flower' — the volatile oil yield from hydrodistillation is below 0.05–0.17% (v/f.w.) depending on plant part, making industrial extraction uneconomical. Research-grade essential oils have been produced by hydrodistillation of flowers, leaves, and fruits in Iran, Portugal, Greece, and Tunisia, but strictly for analytical purposes.
In perfumery, the scent is reconstructed via headspace analysis: the volatiles emitted by the living flower are captured using solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) and analysed by GC-MS, then replicated synthetically. This approach — standard for silent flowers like lily of the valley, peony, and freesia — produces an accord, not an extract.
Heart note in white-floral, Mediterranean-garden, and citrus-floral compositions. Because no commercially viable extract exists, pittosporum functions exclusively as a fantasy accord — a perfumer's reconstructi on from headspace dat a. The typical accord blends jasmine absolute, neroli, tuberose elements, and green-citrus modifiers to approximate the living flower. The key volatile molecules identified in the natural flower — viridiflorol, (E)-nerolidol, alph a-pinene, and n-nonane — suggest a reconstructi on anchored by nerolidol for the sweet-woody depth, linalool for the fresh-floral lift, methyl benzoate for the jasmine-waxy quality, and indole at trace levels for the narcotic heaviness. The n-nonane found at high levels in Portuguese specimens contributes the waxy, almost paraff in-like quality that distinguishes pittosporum from pure jasmine accords. Functionally, a pittosporum accord is a volume builder and diffuser in floral hearts — it pushes sillage without adding sharpness. It bridges citrus top notes and white-floral hearts, making it structurally useful in compositions built around neroli or orange blossom.
