Reseda odorata L. - Resedaceae - fragrant mignonette, garden mignonette, sweet mignonette, Garten-Resede, Duft-Resede

„The fragrant flower has six white to yellowish or greenish petals, the upper ones each divided into three narrow, fingerlike lobes. At the center of the flower are up to about 25 stamens tipped with large dangling orange anthers.“
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reseda_odorata

„Reseda odorata is known primarily as cultivated plants, probably of artificial hybrid origin (S. Martín-Bravo et al. 2007). Probably originating in the southeastern Mediterranean basin (M. S. Abdallah and H. C. D. de Wit 1978), it has been grown in gardens for centuries for its fragrant flowers. The perfume industry has used the essence of the flowers. Now subcosmopolitan, R. odorata escapes from cultivation occasionally but is rarely found naturalized. It is far less common in the flora area than the other species of the genus.“
http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=1&taxon_id=200009758

„The flowers have an intense, sweet, violet-like and fruity odor with a green nuance. Interestingly, the vacuum headspace concentrate of mignonette flowers contains remarkable amounts of the theaspirones shown, 4-11 % and 4-6 %, respectively. “
http://www.bojensen.net/EssentialOilsEng/EssentialOils26/EssentialOils26.htm
[Surburg et al., Volatile compounds from Flowers, in: Teranishi, R.;Buttery, R. G.;Sugisawa, H. Bioactive volatile compounds from plants. (Book) 1993, 179-181]

Headspace analysis of the flowers showed dihydro-β-ionone (23%), α-ionone (18%), dihydo-β-ionol (5%), dihydro-α-ionone (1.8%) and α-ionol (1.2%) to be the main constituents. Other components are β-cyclogeraniol (6%), tetra- (4.5%) and pentadecane (2.4%), (E)-nerolidol (3.6%), nonanal (1.5%), decanal (1.4%), 6-pentyl-α-pyrone (0.5%) and two theaspirones (2.2%).
„Particularly important in olfactory terms is the combination of carotenoid degradation products (β-ionone and descendants) and 6-pentyl-α-pyrone (smells alone like a ripe peach, along with some coumarin).“
[Roman Kaiser, personal mail of an analysis from 1984]

Step, E., Bois, D., Favourite flowers of garden and greenhouse, vol. 1: t. 31 (1896-1897) [D.G.J.M. Bois]
http://www.plantillustrations.org/species.php?id_species=871770

Reseda odorata, Schaugarten Schönhagen CC BY-SA 3.0, Author: Andreas Kraska