Take a deep, sweet lungful of jasmine fragrance–and admire its courage. Its swaggering machismo, even. For a strongly scented flower takes terrible risks, says scent biologist Robert Raguso of the ...

Northeastern North Carolina, not far from the coast, is a long way from the fine fragrance houses of Europe. But the best noses in France have farmers in this region—and its peculiar-smelling purple ...

Male tobacco budworm moths collect perfume from flowers and emit it while they are courting females to make themselves more attractive. It is well known that female moths release scented chemicals to ...

Also known as “Queen of the Night” or Lady-of-the-Night, this evergreen shrub produces long, tubular flowers that open only after dusk. Its intoxicating, almost tropical fragrance becomes strongest in ...

Perfume flower grower Pierre Chiarla picks jasmine flowers in his field in Grasse, France. (Bénédicte Desrus for NPR) GRASSE, France — The town of Grasse sits in the hills above the more famous French ...

GRASSE, France — The town of Grasse sits in the hills above the more famous French Riviera city of Cannes, and it doesn't have the Mediterranean Sea at its doorstep. What it does have is fields of ...

Known as the "Perfume Capital of India," Kannauj, a small town in Uttar Pradesh, has preserved the ancient art of natural perfume-making for over a thousand years. The region’s attar (natural perfume ...