USA (Virginia, North Carolina), Turkey, Greece, Indonesia
Pyramid
Heart
Sweet, honeyed, and narcotic-green. Tobacco blossom (Nicotiana tabacum flower) is one of perfumery's secret weapons — a delicate, tube-shaped flower with an heady, jasmine-adjacent sweetness that has nothing to do with cured tobacco leaf.
Sweet, honeyed, and narcotic-green. Lighter than tuberose. Less indolic than jasmine. More herbaceous-green than either. The sweetness is honeyed rather than sugary, with a green, almost vegetal freshness underneath. The narcotic quality is genuine — the scent is slightly dizzying in concentration.
Nothing like cured tobacco, cigarette smoke, or pipe tobacco. The flower is a white-floral with green edges, closer to linden blossom than to anything associated with smoking.
Softer, warmer — honeyed sweetness deepens, green fades
After a few days
After a few days
Faint, warm, honeyed-floral trace — gentle and persistent
The Full Story
Tobacco blossom is the flower of the tobacco plant (Nicotiana tabacum or N. sylvestris), and it smells completely different from cured tobacco leaf. The flowers are tube-shaped, often white or pale pink, and intensely fragrant — especially at dusk when they release their scent to attract hawk moth pollinators.
The floral scent is sweet, honeyed, and narcotic with a green-herbaceous undertone. It shares territory with jasmine and tuberose (night-blooming, moth-pollinated, indolic-sweet) but is lighter and more herbaceous than either. The absence of the smoky, leathery character of cured tobacco is striking — the flower and the leaf are olfactorily unrelated.
Tobacco blossom absolute exists but is rare. The note in perfumery provides a specific, structured floral sweetness that bridges white flowers and green herbaceousness.
Nicotiana tabacum flowers open in the evening and emit their strongest fragrance at night to attract sphinx moths (hawk moths) — their primary pollinators. The long, tubular flower shape matches the moth's long proboscis, a classic example of co-evolution between plant and pollinator.
Extraction & Chemistry
Extraction method: Tobacco blossom absolute is produced by solvent extraction of the fresh flowers of Nicotiana tabacum or N. sylvestris. Production is very limited — most tobacco cultivation prioritizes leaf harvest, not flower collection. The flowers must be picked just after dusk when fragrance is strongest. Not to be confused with tobacco absolute (from cured leaves), which is a different material entirely.
N/A — no standard commercial tobacco blossom extract CAS
Botanical Name
Nicotiana tabacum
IFRA Status
No known restrictions
Synonyms
Nicotiana, Flowering Tobacco
Physical Properties
Odor Strength
Medium
Lasting Power
6–12 hours
Appearance
Pale yellow to amber liquid (when extracted)
In Perfumery
Tobacco blossom is a heart note providing honeyed, narcotic-green florality. It bridges white flowers and green-herbaceous notes — useful when tuberose or jasmine is too heavy but garden roses are too light. Functions in floral, green-floral, and night-flower compositions. Blends with jasmine, tuberose, linden, and green-herbaceous elements.
