Plumeria and Frangipani—The Story

Once Upon A Time...

During the 16th century there was an Italian nobleman named Marquis Frangipani. He was a perfumer who created a fragrance just for scenting glove boxes. So when women wore their new gloves, they would smell like the perfume. He named this perfume after himself, "Frangipani."

A century later, a French botanist, Charles Plumier, discovered or created/cross-bred? (not sure which) the Plumeria flower... which he named after himself.

The smell of the Plumeria flower reminded people of the popular Frangipani perfume that had been around for about 100 years, so they nick-named the Plumeria plant "Frangipani."

Now that we are able to extract so many more fragrances than in the 16th and 17th centuries, and because our olfactory senses are much more developed, it's easy to detect differences between the popular Frangipani perfume and the Plumeria flower smell. But the name association remains the same.

So... in short, Frangipani and Plumeria were people before they were smells. Frangipani is a perfume, Plumeria is a plant. The names got crossed along the way, but the two scents provided a lovely contrast to each other and lived happily ever after in the world of U.B.

The End!

(Courtesy of McKenna Gordon, founder of Urban Botanic.)

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