Smelling the impossible: How scientists are bottling the lost scents of extinct flowers
Future Society
, a US-based biotech fragrance company that's turning the impossible into a wearable experience.
The Jurassic Park of Perfume
Partnering with
Harvard University Herbaria
, which houses over five million plant specimens, Future Society has sequenced the DNA of plants extinct for more than a century and a half. Using fragments from these long-lost blooms, their team has managed to reconstruct six unique perfumes—each a tribute to a vanished floral world.
Take
orbexilum stipulatum
, for example—a flowering herb that last bloomed in 1881 on Rock Island in the Ohio River. Its extinction followed the disappearance of buffalo, which once spread its seeds, and was sealed when dams flooded its habitat. Now, thanks to DNA extracted from preserved specimens, its scent—green, lush, and tinged with watery notes—has been reimagined for the modern nose.
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'We utilized this technology… to offer a glimpse into the fragrances that these extinct flowers may have produced,' said
Jasmina Aganovic
, CEO of Future Society. 'Our goal was to create scents that have never been experienced before, fragrances that were previously unattainable.' The process is part genealogy, part olfactory detective work: DNA is extracted, genes linked to scent molecules are identified, and then perfumers interpret the data, blending natural, synthetic, and bioengineered notes.
Aganovic is clear: 'We are not fully reviving these flowers… The human connection to our environment cannot be replicated or easily restored'. Yet, with each bottle, Future Society invites us to time-travel through scent—reminding us that, with enough curiosity and ingenuity, even the fragrances of the extinct can bloom again.
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The resulting fragrances are described as 'tributes' rather than exact replicas. Each is a creative leap—a blend of what science reveals and what artistry imagines.
Perfumer Olivia Jan
, for instance, designed 'Grassland Opera' to evoke the lush, wet environment where orbexilum once thrived. Others, like 'Solar Canopy' and 'Invisible Woods,' draw on extinct flowers from South Africa and India, layering earthy, herbal, and fruity notes to tell the story of loss and rediscovery.
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