Osmanthus smells of apricots, which is unusual for a flower. The apricot comes from ionones, the same family of compounds that make violets smell of violets. The flowers are too delicate to distil, so the material is an absolute or a carbon dioxide extract. Different varieties make different amounts of ionone, and the enzymes responsible have been traced.^[1] It is one of the most expensive materials in perfumery, and there is no research on what the extract does.