A tall tree with drooping, intensely fragrant yellow-green flowers, the source of ylang-ylang essential oil.
Ylang-ylang (Cananga odorata, family Annonaceae) is a very fast-growing evergreen tree, 3 to 30 metres tall, with drooping branches that hang in leafy sprays 3 to 6 metres long. Its flowers are very fragrant, especially at night, and are the source of ylang-ylang and cananga oils, popular in perfumery. It is often cultivated in the tropics for its flowers and timber, is spared when forest is cleared, and is grown in gardens; a dwarf form only 1 to 1.5 metres tall flowers all year but never sets fruit.
It is native to South-East Asia, from Myanmar and Thailand through Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines to New Guinea and northern Australia, in moist evergreen forest, secondary forest and at forest edges. It thrives in the humid lowland tropics below 1,200 metres, at 20 to 30°C with 1,500 to 2,000 mm of rain, on fertile, moist but well-drained soil in sun, and it has escaped from cultivation in some areas. At sea level, young trees flower when 1.5 to 2 years old, and they reach full oil production at about ten years, when one tree can bear about 120 kg of flowers a year, yielding about 350 g of oil.
Source: Useful Tropical Plants database (Fern, K.).
A fast-growing tropical tree; flowers are steam-distilled to produce perfume oil.