Vetivert

Oh, and by the way - essential oil made from its roots is widely used in the perfume industry and its woody, deep scent is considered to be an aphrodisiac. We like this plant!

Vetivert is Chrysopogon zizanioides, also very commonly called Vetiver - a perennial grass native to India and now grown in many tropical countries around the world including Haiti and Java. [1] It is one of the essential oils commonly used as a fixative in the perfume industry (a fixative is a less volatile substance that reduces evaporation and adds stability) [2]. Said to improve with age, essential oil of vetiver is highly alcohol-soluble and enables other substances to mix better. It is used as a main ingredient in 36% of high end perfumes in the west - including Chanel No. 5, Opium, Dioressence, Caleche and the Indian perfume Majmua. [3]

Vetivert essential oil is prepared by steam distillation of the roots, which have first been washed or soaked. The oil is a complex mixture of sesquiterpenes and sesquiterpene derivatives, with around 100 components having been identified. The roots themselves are not only made into oil, but in India are burned as incense, used to scent linen and made into mats and other woven goods. [3]

As with certain other oils, the fragrance of the oil from different countries varies. The vetivert oil from India is considered the best - and Rus Khus, a high quality Vetivert oil, is a dark green color - and is produced at the location of harvest, using a traditional copper vessel for slow steam distillation. Haitian Vetivert is highly regarded in perfumery. [3]

Vetivert - History

Vetivert was long used in scent-making in India before its discovery by the perfume industry of the west - and has enjoyed long use in Ayurvedic medicine. This much is known. It appears to have entered the perfumery of the west some time in the 19th century. The earliest account of it I can find, curiously, is from Alexandre Dumas' Memoirs. The fact that this account precedes other accounts by many years leads us to the conclusion that Vetivert must have been indeed scarce at this time. Born in 1802, Dumas recounts:

We can reasonably estimate that the passage referred to might have been 1810-1820. It's known that Dumas' father, Thomas-Alexandre, passed away in 1806.

Vetivert is mentioned in passing by various plant catalogues of the 19th century, and is known to have been used traditionally as an insect repellant for fabrics - but the fact that Dumas' account is the first description I can find of Vetiver's use in Europe, raises some interesting possibilities. Can we be so bold as to speculate that the Dumas family may have been among the first Europeans to have use of the scent? Indeed we may: Reading Dumas' memoirs, we find that Dumas was not only partly of African descent - but that his father served in Egypt under Napoleon in 1798. Could Dumas' father have brought the scent back from Egypt?

Dumas describes his father's campaign with great detail. Dumas senior, growing frustrated with the Egyptian campaign, sold his belongings in Cairo and left for France. Before leaving, he "bought 4000 lbs of Mocha coffee, eleven Arabian horses, and chartered a small vessel." However, the vessel almost sank, Dumas endured capture, imprisonment, poisoning by arsenic and the loss of all his belongings. It took him over two years to get home - and thus the Vetivert cannot have found its way to France via Dumas senior. Dumas was of French and African ancestry; it is possible that knowledge of vetivert came to his family through another means; or indeed possible that the substance had found its way into France by that time. Though it was clearly not sold as an aphrodisiac, otherwise we would not doubt have mention of it.

Vetivert is mentioned in John Lindley's 1846 classic The vegetable kingdom: or, The structure, classification, and uses of plants. He states:

Another early mention is in Neues Repertorium für die Pharmacie, Volume 9 of 1860, which I have endeavoured to translate from German as best I can with scanned pages, Google Translate and some hand corrections:

By 1890, as with Ylang Ylang and the rest of the essential oils still forming the basis of perfumery (and considered to be the aphrodisiacs among scents), vetivert had found its way into the list of perfumers' ingredients.

Is Vetivert an Aphrodisiac?

I can find no mention of Vetiver being an aphrodisiac in western literature prior to 1990: Then all of a sudden, its aphrodisiac reputation spreads through essential oil literature like wildfire! What are we to make of this?

That Vetiver is a sensual scent is beyond doubt. As a mainstay of perfumery since ancient times, it is undisputably an alluring, timeless component of fragrance. However, it is not listed along with other aphrodisiacs in the usual sources of the 19th century.

Finally, after much searching - Criss Juliard, studying use of Vetiveria nigritana in Senegal, has found much use of the plant as an aphrodisiac there. [7]

Vetivert has been much studied in scientific literature - however, none of these studies explores any aphrodisiac qualities ascribed to the plant. They generally deal with its use in environmental protection.

Perfume obviously heightens attraction. And Vetivert is one of the most common of all ingredients in perfumes. It seems therefore highly likely that something in this fragrance excites desire - but exactly what it is, remains another of nature's secrets yet to be understood by science.

Vetivert is listed in the AHPA's "Herbs of Commerce", p.152. [8]