What is the fragrance patchouli?
If you remember the ’60s, chances are you remember the scent of patchouli. We typed this exotic-sounding word into the search box and slogged through listings from vendors of candles, bed linens, perfumes, and aromatherapy products, scanning the results for sites where the descriptive text seemed more factual than sales-oriented. We learned that the essential oil made from the patchouli plant has a “pungent, powerful, mossy, musty” fragrance. The viscous, orangey-amber oil is extracted from the leaves of a two to three foot perennial bush with purple-tinged white flowers, native to tropical Asia. From the pages of Botanical.com, an herbal resource first published in 1931, we learned that patchouli, or Pogostemon patchouli, is a tropical member of the mint family, grown in the East and
