Galbanum Absolute
Origin: Iran

• Details and product description

  Introduction:

  Ferula gummosa is an herbaceous perennial. Its small flowers in umbels have an unpleasant fragrance. Its stem is smooth and its leaves are small, shiny, oval arranged in triangles and finely serrated on the edges. This plant’s resin, called “galbanum,” is harvested by incisions to the roots or the stems of the plant. A milky white sap oozes out. Distillation produces galbanum essence. In perfumery, it gives a specific note called a “green note.” Tiny shiny and oval seeds. On the commercial market, there are 2 types of Ferula galbaniflua : - Origin Levant (large area of the eastern Mediterranean): soft resin or gum, in the form of rounded, sticky tears, hardening with time, sometimes dull sometimes glazed, slightly yellowish or reddish, which are more or less agglomerated. - Origin Persia: hard resin or gum, which has the appearance of non-sticky tears, sometimes agglomerated, white, a little yellowish on the surface. This is the one that is really used in perfumery.

  History:

  It has been known for a long time as a gum and Arabs called it "Kinnah". It was well known to the ancients and Pliny called it 'bubonion'. This umbellifera, originally from Persia, common in the Syrian regions of the Amanus mountains, spontaneously produces a milky juice, which, when dried, takes the form of a yellowish green "tear-shaped resin" with a waxy appearance, called galbanum. In Egypt, according to mythology, it was used to anoint the forehead of Osiris It was also used as incense to burn (green incense found in texts), in embalming rituals and as a cosmetic.  In antiquity, its rather acrid smoke has long been used to keep snakes and insects away. It is still used for this purpose in Coptic medicine. It was used in the composition of the most holy of the Hebrew fragrances, the incense of the sanctuary described in Exodus, whose profane use was prohibited under penalty of "being cut off from one’s people" (Exodus 30, 34-37).  Nowadays, sourced uniquely in northern Iran, it should not be confused with Ferula Rubriacaulis from southern Iran, or F. Ceratophylla from Turkestan, both of which are inferior species. Germaine Cellier, probably the first female perfumer, gave it all its glamor by creating Balmain's Green Wind in 1945. She dared to use 8% of essence in a fragrance evocative of youth, freshness and spring dynamism. Twenty years later, this same perfume became the star of a beautiful floral-green line.

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