Potpourri

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Potpourri

Potpourri is a mixture of dried, naturally fragrant plant

Plant

Plants are Life organisms belonging to the Kingdom Plantae. They include familiar organisms such as trees, herbs, bushes, grasses, vines, ferns, mosses, and green algae....
material, used to provide a gentle natural scent in houses. It is usually placed in a decorative wood

Wood

Wood is an organic material; in the strict sense wood is produced as secondary xylem in the stems of woody plants, notably trees but also shrubs, etc....
en bowl, or tied in small bags made from sheer fabric.

Naturally scented plants used in traditional potpourri include:

Much modern potpourri consists of any decoratively shaped dried plant material (not necessarily from scented plants) with strong synthetic perfume

Perfume

Perfume is a mixture of fragrant essential oils and aroma compounds, fixatives, and solvents used to give the human body, animals, objects, and living spaces a pleasant smell....
s (and also often strongly colored dye

Dye

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Encyclopedia

Potpourri is a mixture of dried, naturally fragrant plant

Plant

Wood

Naturally scented plants used in traditional potpourri include:

Cedar
Cedar

Cedar is a genus of coniferous trees in the plant family Pinaceae. They are most closely related to the Firs , sharing a very similar cone structure....
wood shavings
Cypress
Cupressaceae

The Cupressaceae or cypress family is a conifer family with worldwide distribution. The family includes 27 to 30 genera with about 130-140 species....
wood shavings
Incense-cedar wood shavings
Juniper
Juniper

Junipers are coniferous plants in the genus Juniperus of the cypress family Cupressaceae. Depending on taxonomic viewpoint, there are between 50-67 species of juniper, widely distributed throughout the northern hemisphere, from the Arctic, south to tropical Africa in the Old World, and to the mountains of Central America....
wood shavings
Lavender
Lavender

The Lavenders Lavandula are a genus of 39 species of flowering plants in the mint family, Lamiaceae, native to the Mediterranean region south to tropical Africa and to the southeast regions of India....
leaves and flowers
Mignonette leaves and flowers
Pinyon pine
Pinyon pine

The pinyon pine group grows in the southwestern United States and in Mexico. The trees yield edible pine nut, which were a staple of the Indigenous people of the Americas, and are still widely eaten....
cones
Conifer cone

A cone is an organ on plants in the division Pinophyta that contains the plant sexuality structures. The familiar woody cone is the female cone, which produces seeds....
Rose
Rose

A rose is a perennial plant flower shrub or vine of the genus Rosa, within the family Rosaceae, that contains over 100 species and comes in a variety of colors....
flowers, hips
Rose hip

The rose hip and rose haw, is the pome fruit of the rose plant, that typically is red-to-orange, but might be dark purple-to-black in some species....
, or oil
Rose oil

Rose oil, meaning either rose otto or rose absolute, is the essential oil extracted from the petals of various types of rose. Rose ottos are extracted through steam distillation, while rose absolutes are obtained through solvent extraction or supercritical carbon dioxide, with the absolute being used more commonly in pe...
Cinnamon
Cinnamon

Cinnamon is a small evergreen tree 10?15 metres tall, belonging to the family Lauraceae, and is native to Sri Lanka.The leaf are ovate-oblong in shape, 7?18 cm long....
and Cassia bark
Marjoram
Marjoram

Marjoram is a somewhat cold-sensitive perennial plant herb or undershrub with sweet pine and citrus flavours. It is also called Sweet Marjoram or Knotted Marjoram and Majorana hortensis....
Jasmine
Jasmine

Jasmine is a genus of shrubs and vines in the olive family ,with about 200 species, native to tropical and warm temperate regions of the Old World....
flowers and oil

Much modern potpourri consists of any decoratively shaped dried plant material (not necessarily from scented plants) with strong synthetic perfume

Perfume

Dye

A dye can generally be described as a colored substance that has an Chemical affinity to the Wiktionary:substrate to which it is being applied....
s) added, with the scent often bearing no relation to the plant material used. Sometimes, items which do not originate from plants are mixed in with the potpourri, to give it bulk and to make it more aesthetically pleasing. It is possible to spray scents onto potpourri, however a fixative is needed so that the scent is absorbed. Generally, orris root

Orris root

Orris root is the root of some species of iris , grown principally in southern Europe: Iris germanica, Iris florentina, and Iris pallida....
is used for this purpose.

The number of plant species used in potpourri is large. Researchers have identified 300 species from 95 families, including fungi and lichen

Lichen

Lichens are composite organisms consisting of a symbiosis association of a fungus with a Photosynthesis partner , usually either a green algae or Cyanobacteria ....
s. A few toxic ingredients have been found, such as fruits from Strychnos nux-vomica, the strychnine tree.

Potpourri is used to give the air a pleasant smell. Potpourri is made by mixing oils, leaves, and/or dried flowers. When prepared, the mixture is enclosed in a bottle or jar, and allowed to sit for several weeks. During this time, the potpourri may smell rotten, however it soon improves.

The word potpourri comes from the French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken around the world by around 80 million people as first language, by 190 million as second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired tongue, with significant speakers in 54 countries....
word "pot-pourri," which was the French name for a Spanish

Spain

Spain or the Kingdom of Spain , is a country located in Southern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula.The Spanish constitution does not establish any official denomination of the country, even though Espa?a , Estado espa?ol and Naci?n espa?ola are used interchangeably....
stew with a wide variety of ingredients called olla podrida
Olla podrida

Olla podrida is a Spain stew made from pork and beans and an inconsistent wide variety of other meats and vegetables depending on the recipe used....
. In English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
, "potpourri" is often used to refer to any collection of miscellaneous or diverse items. Literally, however, the word "pot" in French has the same meaning as it does in English, while the word "pourri" means rotten. The term "rotten pot" probably refers to some fermenting which may enhance the natural fragrances of a potpourri's ingredients.

In ceramics manufacturing, a potpourri vase is a vase specifically designed for holding potpourri. In the traditional designs a potpourri container is provided with a pierced fitted lid, through which the scent may slowly diffuse.