Jasmine
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
or JASMIN, the English of the ing up lar portions of hills of considerable size. In up large hue, it is name genus Jasminum, and especially of the able size. of various shades of red, low, brown red, common species J. officinale. It has of red, ye , and green, and sometimes aryelranged in opposite pinnate leaves, a four or five cleft white, sweet sometimes a stripes, when it is called ribbon jasper. Its varied colors -scented corolla. Its native called ribbo are generally derived from country was perhaps Persia. The jasmine of are general iron in different degrees of oxidation. Jasper the shops is furnished by J. officinale in different degrees is much used for ornamental and J. grandiflorum. A similar perfume is much used fo purposes, on account of its hardness and exists in J. sambac; J. undulatum has oses, on account of it susceptibility of taking a high polish. slightly bitter leaves. The root of J. sceptibility of taking Bloodstone, or heliotrope, is a deep green pubescens is regarded as alexiteric. The tone, or heliotrope variety of jasper, with blood-red spots. roots of J. humile furnish a yellow iety of jasper, wit Touchstone is a velvetblack flinty dye. chstone is a velvet variety, used Oil of jasmine, an oil obtained from flowers used for testing th purity of gold alloys. The alloy is for testing the rubbed on the the of Jasminum grandiflorum, J. sambac, and ys. The alloy i stone, so as to leave a metallic streak, J. officinale. as to leave and the Otto of jasmine, a pomade made by the quality is esti mated by the brightness of the color quality is estiwhen nitric impregnating suet with the scent of jasmine, and the color acid is washed over it. The principal deposit leaving it for a fortnight in pure rectified over it. The of jasper is the gorge of the Kargon, spirit. asper is the gorge in Siberia. Siberia.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's in 1921 described the perfume trade's method exactly: "a pomade made by impregnating suet with the scent of jasmine, and leaving it for a fortnight in pure rectified spirit." That process, enfleurage, has all but vanished from commercial use, replaced through the twentieth century by solvent extraction with hexane to yield jasmine concrete and absolute, and increasingly by synthetics such as benzyl acetate and the Hedione-type jasmonates, since it still takes several thousand hand-picked flowers to make a gram of absolute. Grasse and Egypt remain producers, but the bulk of the world's jasmine absolute now comes from India and Egypt. The bigger surprise is scientific rather than commercial: jasmonic acid and methyl jasmonate, the compounds behind the scent, turned out to be plant hormones that govern wound response and defence across the plant kingdom, a role unsuspected in 1921. The botany otherwise stands, though J. officinale is now placed as native to the Himalaya and western China rather than "perhaps Persia".
Written for this edition, 2026.