Category: Glossary

Beeswax in the hive

Beeswax is one of two materials that honeybees use to construct the internal structure of their hives.  (The other is propolis, a harder substance that is used to seal gaps and protect the interior of the hive from the elements.)  Inside the hive, worker bees make hexagonal cells out of beeswax.  The queen lays her eggs in some of the cells, and this is where future generations of bees are raised to maturity.  The other use of the cells is for storing honey.  Cells are normally arranged in a double layer with the cells lying horizontally and opening on opposite sides.  The cells where bees are raised (brood cells) are closed with a cap of beeswax when the occupant is in the pupal stage.  Honey storage cells are closed with a cap of beeswax when they are full.

Worker bees live longer during the Winter, but in Summer they live short, intensive lives.  In simple terms, workers spend:

three weeks developing in a cell from egg to adult,

the next three weeks performing tasks within the hive,

their final three weeks foraging outside the hive for nectar and pollen.

There is a close relationship between the production of beeswax and the production of honey.  Bees make storage cells for honey using wax.  They consume honey in order to secrete the wax to make and cap the cells.  Bees eat eight measures of honey in order to produce a single measure of wax.  There are differing estimates of how much wax is needed to store honey. Most estimates fall in the range of 22 Kg and 30 Kg of honey stored in 1 Kg of wax cells.

I’ve often seen it quoted that a worker bee will produce about one twelfth of a teaspoon of honey during her lifetime.  (I haven’t been able to track down the source of the research behind this estimate.)  If it is true, and a teaspoon of honey is taken to be 5g, then a kilogram of honey is the lifework of around 2,400 bees.  Extending this to wax production, a single kilogram of beeswax is the lifework of almost 20,000 bees.

Why beeswax is so useful

Beeswax is not a single chemical compound.  It’s mixture comprising mostly esters of fatty acids and various long-chain alcohols.  Two of the properties of this mixture make is especially useful.

Firstly, beeswax is remarkable stable.  It doesn’t deteriorate over time through exposure to the atmosphere, to water, or to sunlight.  It doesn’t get attacked by mould or bacteria.  This resistance to mould and bacteria makes it a useful preservative that can be added to other substances.

Secondly, unlike vegetable waxes and petrochemical waxes, beeswax doesn’t melt over a very narrow temperature range.  It gradually softens before it melts, and the changes take place at temperatures that can occur in temperate climates.  At 0 C beeswax is hard and brittle.  At 20 C, often described as “room temperature”, beeswax is solid but no longer brittle.  It can be shaved or carved.  At 37 C it is softer and can be absorbed by human skin.  It softens more as the temperature increases until it is completely liquid above 62 C – 64 C.

Sources of beeswax

Beekeepers render beeswax to remove the dirt and debris that becomes mixed with the wax in a hive.  They put the wax in a pot with water, and then heat the pot until the wax melts.  The molten wax floats on the surface of the water and the solid contaminants sink to the bottom of the pot.  The pot is left to cool, and then the solid wax can be removed.  The cleaned wax can be re-melted and poured into moulds.  Here are a couple of tablets of wax from my local farmers’ market.  One has been more successfully rendered than the other.

Commercial suppliers of beekeeping equipment give credit to beekeepers for beeswax.  The suppliers render the wax and use it to make “bee form” and other beeswax products that they sell.  Bee form is beeswax in sheets that have the outline of cells imprinted in them.  The sheets are fixed into the frames that fit in a hive, encouraging the bees to create tidy frames of cells for brood and honey.  Nowadays bee form is most often seen rolled around a wick and sold as decorative candles.

Refined beeswax in the form of pellets is sold for a range of purposes.  The wax may be yellow, or it may be bleached to a near-white colour.  This is the form in which most individuals and commercial organizations buy beeswax as an ingredient for their products.

Beeswax in cosmetics

Pictures and carvings of ancient Egyptians sometimes show a cone-shaped object on the heads of people.  I used to think that this cone-shaped accessory was an elaborate hairstyle.  More recently, I’ve discovered that they were cones of beeswax scented with fragrant oils.  The perfumed wax melted and ran down over the wearer’s body, masking less fragrant body odours.

Solid perfumes are still in use, and beeswax is still a key ingredient.  I use a mixture of:

30 parts shea butter
10 parts jojoba oil and
4 parts beeswax

                   as the base for solid perfumes.  The beeswax extends the range of temperatures over which the perfume softens and melts.  The butter, oil and wax combination softens and moisturises skin, in contrast to alcohol-based perfumes that can be drying or irritating.

An oil, butter and beeswax combination is the basis of lip-balms.  Beeswax for use in cosmetics is usually food-grade.

Many cosmetic formulations include water-based ingredients blended with oils, butters and waxes.  Water is the best moisturiser for skin, but its effects are short-lived.  Oils and waxes soften skin and help to lock in moisture.  But it is difficult to persuade water-based ingredients to mix with oil-based ingredients, and even harder to persuade them to stay mixed.  To make things even more difficult, mixing oils with water creates the perfect environment for bacteria and moulds to thrive.  Beeswax stabilises mixtures of oils and water because it is an emulsifier.  It is also a preservative, supressing the growth of bacteria and moulds in oil and water mixtures containing up to 50% water.

Beeswax in candles

The most common material used for making candles in the middle ages was tallow.  Tallow is rendered animal fat.  It makes effective candles.  The downside of using tallow candles is that they have a smell when they burn, not a particularly strong smell, but not attractive.  More importantly, tallow candles produce soot when they burn.  Spring Cleaning is claimed to have originated from being able to see the covering of soot left by tallow candles when days became lighter in the Spring.

Beeswax burns cleaner than tallow, with a brighter light.  It has a more pleasant odour.   However it was not as plentiful and therefore it was more expensive.  Supplies of beeswax for candles were appropriated by the Church, and the wealthy.

Nowadays beeswax is not such a rare and expensive material for making candles, but retains its reputation for quality.  The most common material for making candles is paraffin wax, a petrochemical.  Vegetable waxes, notably soya wax, are a popular and more sustainable alternative.

I make candles with a blend of roughly 90% soya wax and 10% beeswax.  The addition of beeswax, in my opinion, creates a blend that burns a little brighter and is a little harder than soya wax alone.

Other uses for beeswax

In no particular order, here are a few other uses for beeswax:

As a component of sealing wax.

In polishes used to preserve and beautify wood.

As a lubricant, for example on the runners of the drawers in wooden furniture.

As a modelling material in the lost-wax casting process.

To form the mouthpieces of a didgeridoo, and the frets on the Philippine kutiyapi – a type of boat lute.

As a filler in the joints of the slate bed of pool and billiard tables.

In the decoration of batik fabrics.

A rambling historical introduction

Germany was occupied by Allied forces at the end of the Second World War. In 1949 Germany was divided. The Federal Republic of Germany was a democracy known as West Germany. The German Democratic Republic was known as East Germany and was largely controlled by the Soviet Union. It wasn’t quite the same sort of democracy as its neighbour. By 1955 West Germany had joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and had re-armed with the blessing of its allies. NATO forces remained in West Germany, but their role switched from occupation of a defeated nation to deterring aggression from the East.  There were 55,000 British military personnel stationed in West Germany from 1955 until German reunification was formalized on 03 October 1990 .

I first saw the Inner German Border in the late 1960s. I was one of the 55,000 for a total of about 8 years across the 1970s and 1980s.

A cold day

Sometime in the 1980s I was preparing for a small-scale military exercise in the region of Germany called the Eifel. The Eifel is a range of hills between Belgium and Germany. On the Belgian side it is called the Ardennes. It was the site of the Battle of the Bulge, the last major Nazi offensive of WWII from 16 Dec 1944 – 25 Jan 1945. Our base for our training exercise was a military camp called Vogelsang (Bird Song) that was built as a training camp for Hitler Youth.

On a very chilly day, 3 of us walked the terrain we planned to use for a map-reading exercise. (Paper maps. No GPS. No satellite images. And no mobile phones.) Sometime in the afternoon we took refuge in a Gasthof (pub) to wait for our ride back to camp. Our host took pity on us. While we waited for our glasses of beer, he poured us each a shot of clear spirit from an ice-encrusted bottle he kept in a freezer. I won’t ever forget that experience.

Revisiting spirit from the Eifel

I didn’t identify the liquor from that pub in the Eifel for another ten years. It turned out to be Eifelgeist (literally, Eifel spirit). According to the distillery, it is made with 42 hand-picked herbs, spices and flowers. The distillery doesn’t divulge its secret ingredients, but I’m sure the dominant herb is Wintergreen.

For the last 25 years I’ve kept successive bottles of Eifelgeist and a couple of shot glasses in the household freezer. The bottle is retrieved just 2 or 3 times a year to work its warming magic.

Wintergreen essential oil

Wintergreen essential oil is extracted by steam distillation from a genus of plants called Gaultheria, the most common of which is likely the American wintergreen Gaultheria procumbens. The aromatic component of Wintergreens is methyl salicylate. As well as being extracted from plants, methyl salicylate is synthesised.

I looked up the entry for Wintergreen essential oil in Julia Lawless’ Encyclopaedia of Essential Oils. Among other things, this is what it says:

ARMOATHERAPY/HOME USE None. ‘Avoid both internally and externally.’

The WebMD entry for wintergreen oil includes:

Wintergreen oil is POSSIBLY UNSAFE to take by mouth. Taking wintergreen oil can cause ringing in the ears, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea (US spelling!), headache, stomach pain, and confusion. As little as 6 ml (a little over a teaspoon) of the oil taken by mouth can be fatal.

When is a poison not a poison?

“What is there that is not poison? All things are poison and nothing is without poison. Solely the dose determines that a thing is not a poison.”

– Paracelsus (1493-1541).

Wintergreen, or more accurately synthetic methyl salicylate, is ingested in large quantities overall, but mostly very, very small amounts at a time. It’s a favourite flavouring for toothpaste, chewing gum, sweets and soft drinks, particularly in the USA. It’s one of the flavouring ingredients in Coca-Cola.

Medicinal Uses

Wintergreen oil is present at 3.7% in Olbas Oil, an “Inhalant decongestant” and topical muscle rub.

Methyl salicylate is chemically similar to aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid). 1 ml (20 drops) of oil of wintergreen is equivalent to about 1860 mg of aspirin, or almost six regular-strength adult aspirin tablets. Wintergreen is normally used in muscle rubs and liniments. It is one of the ingredients in the version of Surgical Spirits sold in the US. In most over-the-counter muscle rub creams the content of methyl salicylate is around 30%. In some it can be as high as 70%.

While topical muscle rubs containing Wintergreen are generally safe, the dosage is critical. The Naturopathic Doctor News & Review notes “In 2007, a 17-year-old cross-country runner died from excessive and long-term applications of topical muscle creams for pain relief. The medical examiner determined that an abnormally elevated level of methyl salicylate in her body was the cause of death.”

Perfume use

During the afternoon of 29 May 1969 a naked woman carried a cross across the floor of the Copenhagen Stock Exchange. The action was designed to illustrate the story of Christ driving the merchants out of the temple. It was staged by Bjørn Nørgaard and performed by Lene Adler Petersen. The photograph is a modern icon (which I can’t include here because of copyright issues, but you can see on Bjørn Nørgaard’s website). The action became known as The Female Christ.

While interesting in its own right, The Female Christ became relevant to a discussion of Wintergreen when a perfume company called 19-69 launched a new fragrance earlier this year (2020).  They called it Female Christ.  It is one of very few perfumes  I could identify that includes Wintergreen. Fragrantica only lists two. I picked the one described as “unisex”. This is what Fragrantica says about Female Christ:

“Female Christ by 19-69 is a Woody fragrance for women and men. This is a new fragrance. Female Christ was launched in 2020. Top notes are Patchouli, Eucalyptus and Pimento; middle notes are Rhubarb, Red Thyme, Geranium and Wintergreen; base notes are Benzoin, Amber, Cashmere Wood, Vanilla and Cinnamon.”

It’s an intriguing fragrance, but my non-professional nose is challenged to detect the Wintergreen.  I do plan to attempt using Wintergreen in a fragrance at some point.  I won’t be attempting to emulate The Female Christ.

I had an awareness that glycerine was a useful ingredient before I started to research this post.  Then I discovered a range of applications that was far wider than I suspected.  In the process of researching glycerine I turned up a couple of useful, and fascinating, resources.  I learned from one of them that the Glycerine Producers’ Association in the US had identified 1,583 different uses for glycerine by 1949.

I’ll explore some of the wider uses of glycerine later , and in a couple of sidebars.  But to begin I’ll give a description of it and relate its properties to cosmetic and culinary uses.

Glycerine is a clear liquid, almost colourless, odourless, viscous, and denser than water.  It has a specific gravity of  approximately 1.25.  It is hygroscopic (attracts water) and for all effective purposes it is not toxic to human health or the environment.  These two properties, its affinity for water and its absence of toxic effects on human physiology, make glycerine such a useful cosmetic ingredient.

There are other chemicals that share some of the properties of glycerine, but which are not so benign.  Here’s a sidebar about one of them.

Cosmetic uses

In cosmetics and culinary applications, glycerine is described as “humectant”.  It traps moisture and prevents drying.  It is added to cake icings (frostings) to prevent them drying out and becoming hard and brittle.  The same property is used when glycerine is used as a skin moisturiser.  Glycerine is absorbed in the surface of skin and it is remarkably persistent, remaining detectable for days rather than hours.  It draws in and holds moisture.  It should always be mixed with a little water before it is applied to skin, otherwise it will dry it out rather then moisturising it.

I use glycerine in intensive hand cremes, including Heavy Duty Hand Creme and Rescue Hand Creme.  It also appears in the recipe for Lammas Lotion and Pumpable Body Lotion.  It is the wetting agent in #53 Insanitizer – a hand sanitizer based on the World Health Organization recipe for hand sanitizer.

Glycerine has been used in skin tonics and serums since the early nineteenth century.  William B Dick’s Encyclopaedia of Practical Receipts and Processes, published by Dick and Fitzgerald in New York and appearing in their 1866 catalogue, contains three recipes for glycerine and rose water tonics.  The recipes only vary in the proportion of glycerine to rose water.  I have recipes for both a tonic and a more intensive serum.

The history of Glycerine

My source for much of the history of glycerine was documents published on the website of the American Cleaning Institute.  Although it isn’t well signposted, at the bottom of the ACI homepage there is a link to “SCIENCE”.  The archives contain peer reviewed papers, many of which are scanned historical documents that won’t normally turn up in a web search.

The history of glycerine begins with its discovery in 1779 by K W Scheerle, a swedish chemist .  Scheerle’s method produced glycerine as a by-product of making soap.  The empirical formula for glycerine, C₃H₈O₃, was determined by a French chemist Pelouse in 1836.  The structural formula, C₃H₅(0H)₃, was not established until 1883, by Berthelot and Lucea.

Glycerine in Soap

Glycerine is still produced as a by-product of soap-making.  A lower grade of glycerine is also produced in greater quantities as a by-product of biodiesel.

Although glycerine is normally removed from soap, it can be left in the finished product or added at a later stage in processing.  Pears soap was first produced in a factory close to Oxford Street in London in 1807.  Pears soap gets its characteristic transparency from the glycerine remaining in the soap, and from the use of alcohol (methanol) in the production process.

The addition of glycerine, alcohol and sugar to a soap base can produce an almost perfectly transparent soap.

Funding Nobel Prizes

Not all applications of glycerine are as gentle as Pears soap.

Even before the structural formula of glycerine was known, glycerine had been chemically converted into trinitroglycerine.  Trinitroglycerine is both highly explosive and highly unstable.  Its tendency to explode spontaneously rendered it useless as a practical explosive until Alfred Nobel invented a way of stabilising it in 1866.  Nobel called his invention dynamite.  With the invention of dynamite, glycerine became both economically and industrially significant.

Here’s a sidebar on nitroglycerine.

Lavender has made an appearance with me several times in the last month.

Even if you think you know nothing of herbalism, you probably know that people use sachets of dried lavender flowers to discourage moths from damaging woollen and linen fabrics.  If you think you know nothing of aromatherapy, you probably still know that the smell of lavender helps people to relax and sleep.

Cultivation

There are 47 registered species of lavandula, for which the common name is lavender.  Lavandula is a member of the mint family of plants.  Lavender has cosmetic, medicinal and culinary uses.  It was prized by the ancient Greeks and the Romans.  The name Lavender is derived from the Latin verb lavare, to wash.  English Lavender has a sweeter flavour for culinary use.  Dutch Lavender yields an oil which is richer in a family of chemicals called terpenes, which include camphor.  Dutch lavender has a more bitter taste, but is more effective in deterring moths.  Most lavender species have uses in perfumery.

Lavender is grown commercially, mostly for the production of lavender essential oil.  It is native to India, the Middle East, to many Mediterranean and North African countries, to Europe and the Canary Islands.  Bulgaria is the largest commercial producer.  Provence in France is well-known for its lavender fields.  There are English lavender farms in the Cotswolds and around London.

Lavender oils and salves

My first engagement with lavender this year was prompted by the plight of Millie.  Millie is a horse.  Her face had been savaged by flies, especially around her mouth and eyes.  P asked me if I could produce a salve that would soothe the bites and discourage further insect bites.  The result was lavender infused olive oil, lavender salve, and lavender & patchouli salve.

I acquired a package of 500g of dried lavender flowers from Provence to make lavender oil and Millie’s salves.  The recipes used 100g, leaving me with plenty for other experiments.

Lavender Ice Cream

My second encounter with lavender was at Cotswold Lavender, at Snowshill in Worcestershire.

The lavender fields are picturesque in June and July, so much so that they are a favourite venue for photography.  When they are open to the public, they quickly fill with groups smiling at phones and cameras.  I visited with parents who have taken annual photographs of their child in the lavender fields.  The child, now three years old, was not in a mood to co-operate this year.  I went to the gift shop in search of ice cream to bribe the child and sooth frustrated adults.

I bought a selection of ice-cream flavours and offered them around.  The lavender flavour remained un-chosen, left for me.  Given the setting, I thought lavender ice cream would be a good choice.  It seems the rest of the party knew better, and I found it bland and disappointing.  I challenged myself to do better.  The result of my challenge is my version of a recipe for lavender ice cream.

I certainly plan to repeat the ice cream, and I’ll make some more lavender infused oil.  I’ll still have about half of the dried flowers left, so I’m looking for other uses.  I’m considering a lavender syrup, a lavender cordial (perhaps with some hedgerow fruit) and lavender lip-balm.

When my still is up and running I may prepare lavender toilet waters, but that’s for another time.

Some cosmetics comprise just oils, butters and waxes.  The vast majority comprise oils (including butters and waxes) mixed with water or water-based ingredients.  The oils soften and nourish skin while the water-based ingredients provide hydration.  It’s a proven combination, but presents some challenges.  One challenge is that he combination of oil and water provides the perfect environment for bacterial and fungal growth.  I’ll address that in a later post about preservatives.  In this post I’m going to address how we get the oils to stay mixed with the water-based ingredients.

Mixing Oil and Water

We all know that “oil and water don’t mix”.

In truth, Oil and water DO mix.  The challenge is to keep them mixed, and that’s where emulsifiers come in.

An emulsion consists of tiny droplets of one liquid dispersed in another liquid.  A familiar example would be an oil and vinegar salad dressing.  The oil floats on the vinegar until you give it a really good shake.  Then the two layers mix into one cloudy layer.  In this case tiny droplets of oil are dispersed throughout the vinegar.  After a while the layers separate again.

Let’s walk through the process of creating an emulsion, looking at what happens to the molecules in each liquid.

Making an emulsion

We start with two layers that I’m going to call “oil” and “water”.  (They could just as easily be oil and vinegar, or any two liquids that don’t easily mix.)

The oil molecules are all slightly attracted to each other, and stick together.  Similarly the water molecules are attracted to each other, and they stick together too. There is no attraction between any oil molecule and a water molecule. The oil is lighter than the water, so it floats on top.  

Now we shake the two layers up together.  In this case tiny droplets of oil disperse throughout the water.  As before, the oil sticks to itself, the water sticks to itself, and they don’t stick to each other.

If you take a look at the two “droplets” of oil on the right, you’ll see that they are close enough for the attraction between them to take effect.  The attraction will pull them closer together until they coalesce into one larger droplet.  As the molecules jostle around in the mixture, more and more droplets will come into contact and coalesce until we end up with the two original layers.

Keeping it together

Emulsifiers stabilise the tiny droplets.  An emulsifier that works in an oil-in-water emulsion has molecules that look like water to a water molecule, and look like oil to an oil molecule.  One end of the emulsifier molecule is a bit like water, and the other end is a bit like oil.  The emulsifier coats the droplets in a very thin layer.  In this case it makes the oil droplets look like water droplets, both to other oil droplets and to the surrounding water.  The oil droplets can’t get close enough to each other for them to be attracted, so they don’t coalesce:

There are lots of emulsifiers that are available to cosmetic manufacturers.

A selection of emulsifiers

The use of beeswax as an emulsifier was first recorded at the end of the first century.  Beeswax works effectively in recipes that contain up to about 50% water-based ingredients.  Such preparations are known as Cold Creams.  Examples are my Hand Creme #14, Heavy Duty Hand Creme #21 and Rescue Hand Cream #22.  Each recipe includes about 3% beeswax.

Modern emulsifiers can stabilize emulsions which contain 75% or more water.  This is good news if we are trying to create a lotion specifically for hydration.  (It’s also really good news for cosmetic manufacturers who can reduce the proportion of costly ingredients in their products to less than 25% of the total.)

There are many emulsifiers available.  Each has its own characteristics, its uses and limitations, and cost.  Some are sensitive to the pH (acidity) of the formulation in which they are used.  Others are made using palm oil.  Some may contain traces of solvents or reagents used in their manufacture.  I prefer to use emulsifiers that are made in a chemical process that takes olive oil as a feedstock.  Olivem 1000 is one example.

The emulsifier that I use most is also derived from olive oil.  It is a mixture comprising Cetearyl Olivate and Sorbitan Olivate.  The recommended amount to use in a recipe is 1.5 – 4%.  I use about 3% in most lotions, and 4% with 1% beeswax in Pumpable Body Lotion #46.  It melts at 65-75C, which is somewhat higher than the melting point of beeswax at just under 60C.

Here is a small selection of emulsifiers that you might find listed in the ingredients of cosmetics and toiletries.  A quick scan of half a dozen bottles in this household found these:

• • Sodium Lauryl Sulphate
  • PEG-100 Stearate
  • Cetearyl Alcohol
  • Stearic Acid
  • Glyceryl Stearate
  • Glyceryl Oleate

In my collection of essential oils I have a bottle of Ylang Ylang.  I don’t remember buying it.  It was probably one of the ones I bought when I started to get interested in fragrances and aromatherapy.  But what is Ylang Ylang?  How do you pronounce it, even?  It’s sweet and floral, and I thought it a bit, well, meh.

So I started a long-overdue investigation.

Let’s start with the pronunciation.  There are some YouTube clips that explain the pronunciation, but I found the Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries definition and pronunciations most helpful.

The pronunciation reflects the origin of the oil in countries around the Indian Ocean.  The oil is derived by steam distillation of the flowers of the Cananga odorata tree.  The tree belongs to Annonaceae family, which includes custard apples.

The next place I chose to go to add to my shamefully poor knowledge of Ylang Ylang was one of my favourite reference books.  Turning to the last entry in Julia Lawless’ The Encyclopaedia of Essential Oils, I found this section in the entry:

ACTIONS Aphrodisiac, antidepressant, anti-infectious, antiseborrhoeic, antiseptic, euphoric, hypotensive, nervine, regulator, sedative (nervous), stimulant (circulatory), tonic.

That got my attention.  I looked a little further down the entry to see if there were any suggestions of negative aspects to Ylang Ylang:

SAFETY DATA Non-toxic, non-irritant, a few cases of sensitization reported. Use in moderation, since its heady scent can cause headaches or nausea.

So far, so good.  There are lots of good reasons to use Ylang Ylang, provided it’s used in moderation.  Given that the scent is very powerful, that won’t be a problem.

Fragrantica lists Ylang Ylang as: “A rich, floral, sweet note with a nuance of banana, woody, dirty, sour nuances”.  It’s variously listed as a Heart Note, or a lighter Bass note.

In her book Essence and Alchemy, Mandy Aftel advises that Ylang Ylang blends particularly well with Cognac and with Black Pepper.  Other combinations include Cardamom, and Pink Grapefruit.

As I write, some of the Coronavirus containment measures are being lifted in the United Kingdom.  Meanwhile healthcare professionals are still pouring alcohol over their hands and wearing latex gloves.  Dental surgeries are about to re-open, and hairdressers are scheduled to open on 04 July.  More than ever there is a need for moisturizing creams to soothe hands that take care of other people.  So I’m starting to plan to produce some form of “rescue cream” which combines a powerful moisturizer with a blend of grounding and uplifting fragrances.  Ylang Ylang, as an antidipressant and antiseborrhoeic (fighting eczema and other skin conditions) may have a prominent place in the recipe.

Afghan coats were icons of the Swinging 60s and the 1970s, just as much as wide flared trousers and miniskirts were.  From Carnaby Street in London to the Woodstock Festival, Afghans were worn by celebrities and anyone else who could afford them.  Among many others, John Lennon, George Harrison, Marc Bolan,  and Janis Joplin were photographed wearing them.

Preservative

The people who produced afghan coats packed them with patchouli leaves to preserve them and protect them from insect infestation.  The residual smell of patchouli was as much a part of an afghan coat as the smell of lanolin, the texture of the sheepskin, and the warmth of the coat.  The coats were very warm to wear, and at times too warm for anyone other than a dedicated follower of fashion.  But an over-warm body and a little sweat brings out some of the magic of patchouli.

The dawning of the New Age of Aquarius, the Hippies and their afghan coats brought about a renaissance in the popularity of patchouli.  The idea of using leaves and twigs of patchouli to mothproof garments before despatch from India, Nepal and Afghanistan was far from new.  Patchouli was popular in the nineteenth century too.  In her book Artifice of Beauty, Sally Pointer observes:

“The vogue for Kashmir shawls led to patchouli being a favourite Victorian scent owing to the use of the dried leafy twigs being included in bales of shawls as a mothproofing method.  Traders quickly noticed that shawls which smelt of patchouli sold faster than those which did not.  They eventually added patchouli to shawls from places other than India, to lend that all-important market edge.”

I have used Patchouli as an ingredient in an effective insect repellent.  It’s called:

Patchouli is a small blue flower, belonging to the same family of plants (Lamiaceae) as mints and dead nettles.  I’ve wondered if patchouli inspired the drug in Philip K Dick’s novel A Scanner Darkly.  (“Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” may be Philip K Dick’s best known novel.  Blade Runner was the film.)

Perfume

In perfumery patchouli is a base note.  The essential oil is produced from the dried leaves of the plant by steam distillation.  The oil is viscous, sticky, and doesn’t dissolve readily in the alcohols used as carriers for perfumes.  Physically, it’s not the easiest essential oil with which to work.  In it’s defence, it is one of the few essential oils I would consider putting on bare skin undiluted (but please see the general guidelines in the Safety section).  Julia Lawless lists Patchouli as “Non-toxic, non-irritant, non-sensitizing”.

Used alone or as the dominant note in a perfume, patchouli is very assertive.  It first appears slightly sweet and floral, but then it works with the wearer’s body chemistry to develop into something powerful and musty that is raw and sexual.  There is nothing subtle about it.

Used sparingly, patchouli can add intrigue to a blend.  It blends well with woody fragrances (angelica root, oakmoss, vetiver, sandalwood, cedarwood).  It also blends well with resins (labdanum), with citruses (bergamot, orange, lime, neroli), with florals (lavender, jasmine, rose).  The pairing of patchouli with rose is a classic blend.

Patchouli can work with less pleasant odours to produce something that is  acceptable, if not fabulous.  It doesn’t mask other odours as much as bring out the best in them while playing down their more difficult aspects.  I use hemp oil in my Heavy Duty Hand Creme #21.  Hemp oil is a great conditioner for dry skin, but its smell is not attractive.  The addition of a little patchouli doesn’t hide the smell of hemp completely, but it does soften it and transform it into something more pleasant.

 

“The banch of the Linden is leafy and green”

I used to travel Cheltenham each week for a language lesson.  That stopped when UK entered Lockdown.  Cheltenham is a city with parks and mature trees.  Leaves were beginning to appear on my last visit.  I had occasion to make a single visit to Cheltenham yesterday, and the chance to see the trees in their summer liveries.

Linden Trees

Of all the trees in Cheltenham, it’s the Lindens that I miss most.  While they are commonly called Lime trees, they are not related to the citrus trees that bear lime fruits.  In the US and Canada they are called Basswood.

In the UK, Lindens blossom from early June and into July.

Aphids feast on the sap of Linden trees.  The aphids are often “farmed” by ants, producing a sweet, very sticky sap that drips from the tree.  So while the trees provide shade, it’s not a good idea to park a pretty car underneath a Linden.

The young, translucent leaves of the European Lime can be used in salads.  They are also dried and used to prepare a tea.

Scents have a very direct effect upon human memory.  Most famously Marcel Proust wrote about scent in Remembrance of Things Past.  When Proust’s narrator, Marcel, eats the crumbs of a madeleine dipped in lime blossom tea it triggers a process of remembering that brings his past to life.

Memories of Linden

I have two schooldays memories directly linked to the scent of Linden blossom.  My first memory of Linden blossom comes from playing cricket.  I wasn’t a team sportsperson, and I loathed cricket.  However, for half of each game the unfortunate team that included me would be batting.  Apart from the few moments it took for my innings to be terminated, I spent the remainder of the team innings in the shade of a Linden tree, reading or just daydreaming.

My second memory of Linden was associated with amateur dramatics.  My box of greasepaint included sticks of Leichner #5 and #9, and the cheapest bottle of makeup remover I could find in Boots the Chemists.  It was a Boots’ own product scented with Linden.  I suspect it was a mixture of distilled witch hazel and Linden hydrosol.

Linden blossom has a very distinctive scent.  Fragrantica describes it as “a bright yellow floral, with a honey and green nuance”.  It’s a Heart note, so it has some persistence.  I’ve used it as the basis of my Beltane fragrance, both as a perfume and as a fragrance for Hand Creme #14.

There is an evocative description of Linden trees, their cultural significance and history, in How the Light Gets In.

And the opening quote? It comes from the second verse in this chilling piece of cinema:

 

I started writing about a seasonal perfume for Ostaria, or Ēostre, or Easter, or the Vernal Equinox, or the Spring Equinox, or however you may choose to mark that part of the year.  Partway through I realised that a significant part of the post was about Damiana.

Damiana (Turnera Diffusa) is a small shrub that is native to parts of Central and South America, certain States in the south of the United States, and some Caribbean islands.  It belongs to the plant family Passifloraceae, the same family as the Passion Flower and Passion Fruit.  This gives a clue as to the main uses of Damiana – it is reputed to be a powerful aphrodisiac.

Herbal uses of Damiana

I say “reputed to be an aphrodisiac” because the evidence is almost entirely in folklore.  There’s very little clinical evidence, and it appears inconclusive.  I’ve found one study in 2009 which dealt with the sexual performance of male rats, which reported a positive result in a small sample population.  Most other studies have looked at the efficacy of herbal blends in which Damiana was present.  Other components of these blends included ginseng, ginkgo, guarana and vitamins.

The lack of conclusive clinical evidence doesn’t affect the popularity of Damiana in herbal products.  Health stores such as Holland and Barrett in the UK sell Damiana leaf in capsule. Baldwins sell Damiana as a tincture.

Although most preparations including Damiana use the dried leaves, either in capsules or as a herb tea, or even a herbal smoking mixture, an essential oil can be produced from the leaves and woody part of the plant by steam distillation.  This essential oil appears in a limited selection of essential oil catalogues.   Many essential oil reference books don’t list it.  (You won’t find it in the Aqua Oleum range, or at Neal’s Yard, at Naissance or even Mystic Moments.  There are no suppliers of Damiana essential oil supplying through Amazon UK at the time of writing.)  A web search will turn up some suppliers, but a word of caution – some of the oils that are offered are either essential oils that have been diluted with a carrier, or the herb has been diffused into a base oil (so not an essential oil at all).

DAMIANA AS FRAGRANCE

My interest in Damiana essential oil gives a brief nod to the fact that festivals celebrating with eggs and rabbits were never really chaste.  Its potential aphrodisiac properties suggested it as a component in a seasonal perfume for the Spring Equinox.  I chose to use it as the starting point in developing my seasonal fragrance.

Damiana has been used in commercial perfumes.  Fragrantica lists two, both produced by boutique perfumiers specialising in natural perfumery.

Damiana has a distinctive, but rather elusive scent.  I’ve seen it listed as a Head note and a Heart note, so that suggests it’s slightly heavier than most Head notes, but at the light end of Heart notes.  The scent is described as “woody or mossy”, and also as “spiced orange”.  I’d lean towards the “woody or mossy” description, but I can appreciate the spiced citrus description too.

My Spring Equinox perfume is intended as fragrance for a cold cream, and I tend to use reduced quantities of Head notes for such applications.  The Heart notes are at the lighter end of that classification.  Litsea Cubea and Melissa reinforce the citrus qualities of the Damiana.  A little Neroli gives just a suggestion of something floral.  Rosemary plays to the Damiana’s wood and spice.  Vetiver underpins all the other notes with persistent wood and spice:

Heart

• • Damiana (10 drops)
  • Litsea Cubea (May Chang) (4 drops)
  • Melissa (4 drops)
  • Rosemary (3 drops)
  • Neroli (3 drops)

Bass

• • Vetiver (6 drops)

This is the second year that I’ve used this blend.  It’s becoming established in my recipe book as Ostara.