Wolfsbane

[stardust]

Notorious for its properties for protection against werewolves and curing lycanthropy, this nefarious plant also has a fine history of use as a virulent poison. Clasically, Medea employed it in her many works of vengeance. This concoction of ours has none of the lethal qualities, but still personifies all of the herb's dark history beautifully.

Wolfsbane is my most favorite scent ever.

It starts off very woodsy--like a damp forest. It lightens up a bit, and the herbs come out more. It remains a dark, wet scent. The herbs are fresh and green, not dried. I always get the image of a dark, verdant forest when I wear this. A hint of spiciness emerges at the end, but it is a foreign spiciness, plant-based and not at all in conflict with the other stages. Long-lasting, too (scents usually disappear very quickly on me).

This is so perfect on me, I can't even describe it. I have a strong visceral reaction--my pulse quickens, and the dull throb of lust surges through my body when I smell it. I've never felt this strongly about a fragrance before.

Now, everyone go out and buy big bottles of this so that the lab never has to discontinue it! Edited September 28, 2005 by Shollin

[diabolique]

so green and herbal. i hate that!

 

on my skin, it actually turns a little bit floral. it's sharpness reminds me a bit of the now discontinued cancer. yeaaah, this smells like a floral.

[magikfanfic]

In the bottle: This is one of the boy's favorite scents, and I'm somewhat afraid that he'll wear it down to nothing before we can get a bottle here. That means that I have to be very nice to this imp and possibly go scurrying around the forum looking for more. That said, though, let's review. Pepper and herbs with the slightest hint of a floral. Overall, it's a lot gentler than I thought it would be. I was expecting things like musk and patchouli, but this is little more than an herbal with a pepper kick so far.

 

Wet: Pepper. That's what it says to me. Pepper. But not like the pepper in Callie, which drove me up the wall. This is a more refined pepper that's tempered with herbals. Wow, I can actually picture a hill with herbs growing on it in the light of the full moon. There's a floral note in the background as if this might be a flowering herb.

 

Dry down: This starts to dry pretty quickly. It's an herbal/floral with a kick. A very brown smell as opposed to green for me. Green herbals are very fresh and clean. This is darker and has more spice to it, more pepper if you will. But the slight floral tames it and clams everything down.

 

Dry: Still herbally, though the pepper has mostly faded and the floral is in the background. It really smells like nothing I've ever smelled before so I'm running out of good comparitions for it. It has something underneath it which provides a citrus smell that isn't really. And that description in and of itself makes no sense. The floral is also taking over a bit but leaving the herbal note under it for a heavy backing. This is dark and brooding. It's nice, but is another of those scents I'd never wear. It smells pretty good on the boy, though, and, after several hours, even turns to faint roses on him. Surprisingly enough, he doesn't mind that fact. This is nice on me, but it doesn't speak to me the way scents like Dormouse, Severin and Titania do. So I'm washing it off and putting the imp aside for him.

[Finny]

At first I smell sharp green forest, pine and soil, then a smell of, I'm not sure... maybe juniper berries? It mellows down to a soft pine and rose scent, with a bit of spiciness.

 

I do agree with the rice pudding smell description, but it isn't that it smells like it, as much as that the smell reminds me of rice pudding.

 

Very beautiful scent.

[TheDarkMother]

I got this one from a swap. *hugs and kisses*

 

In the Bottle: A white floral. Huh…that’s pretty odd. Not what I was expecting at all.

 

On Me: A bit more spicy than what I smelled in the bottle. That’s more like what I was expecting. Its still rather floral, which I am really surprised about. Its kinda like a peppery floral. I like it though, and probably enough to actually want a larger bottle. The odder the scent, the more that I like it.

[sarada]

Green!!

 

It's very intriguing to me when a fragrance does not include a description of its component parts, so I always have to find out what the deal is. I was hoping for something green and herbal here and that is definitely what it is. Actually, it reminds me of Burial without the earthy component. Juniper, moss, pine, those might be in there somewhere -- as well as a rosey scent that reminds me of my beloved Zombi. I haven't worn this one out a lot, I just keep dabbing it on myself at home to try to figure it out. It is very sharp, strong and pungent and I like to "coordinate" my scents with what I'm wearing, but I just don't have anything GREEN enough to wear with this!

 

I don't get much of a wood scent from this, unless it's extremely damp and mossy, but it does smell like vegetation. I really wonder what other people would pick up on, when I'm wearing this. Will they think that a giant mossy rose monster is shambling towards them? Or will they think it smells more like dried herbs? Well, I seem to have a preference for dark earthy or green scents with a hint of rose mixed in (Burial and Zombi are in my top ten, and I also love GothRosary's Graveyard, which is very similar) so this is definitely for me.

 

Edited to add: It dries down to a very green rose scent on me, by the way -- it lingers for a very, very long time in that stage!

 

Edited again to add: I'm almost certain that Spanish Moss is the predominant note in this. The giant mossy rose monster is undeniably Spanish Moss! But there was something else in this that didn't agree with me, the creamy undertone that several others have mentioned that just clashed with the greenery and made the whole thing uncomfortable for me.

Edited July 18, 2005 by sarada

[omly]

Wet: This is very foresty with lots of pine while it is wet. It has a spicy floral aspect to it.

 

Drying: There is something about Wolfsbane that reminds me of a men's cologne. Yet there is also a subtle floral aspect that seems to bely that description. If I had to give it a descriptor I think I would call this gender neutral.

 

Dry: This is a slightly spicy rosey scent. It is fairly soft but still has a fairly green feel to it.

[Aurelius]

I got this in a swap with Laurel the Woodfairy. I just read her review and it made me giggle. She brought up Remus Lupin and I must admit, this scent reminds me of him too.

 

This is very pine-y and woodsy on me. I smell vaguely like a forest, which I like. But I must be careful not to put too much on; this sucker is STRONG and has a bite. Oh god, that was a horrible pun. My apologies.

[inkstone]

A freebie from the Lab.

 

In the vial: Green. Very, very green.

 

Wet: Green, herbal & medicinal. I don't think this is my thing.

 

Drydown: A mix of herbal and woody on me. There's something vaguely floral in this, but I'm not sure what it is.

 

Final thoughts: This is strong on me, and I only swiped it once along my wrists. But ultimately, it's not for me.

[Macha]

I swapped for a vial of this. Mostly I thought it was a cute name, and I also heard that it was a nice green scent.

 

In the vial: Oh yes, that smells very green. Nice and herby. Cool.

 

Wet, on skin: I still smell an herby fresh-cut greeness, with something sweet blooming up out of...um...rose? No, not rose. ROSE. A rose that rises up out of the green, out of nowhere, and completely takes over. There's some greenery still in there, enough to make you think you're stuck in a sharp, prickly thicket of the stuff, but the rose is everywhere. Where the HELL did that rose come from?

 

Dry, on skin: The rose stayed perfectly true over the next 10 hours. Hmm... I'm not a big rose fan. It's on my list of single-notes that will kill a fragrance for me. Honestly though, this isn't so bad. It's not nearly so cloyingly sweet as the rose perfumes that made me run screaming from department stores as a kid. This is a bit wild and soft and just green enough to make the difference. This rather reminds me of the rose gardens where I work, and how the garden smells when they trim back all the rose bushes and dump all the extra branches, complete with thorns, stems, leaves and rose heads, into one great big damp mound.

 

Conclusion: I'm just perplexed. Having gone back and read other people's reviews, I see a few people mention rose as a minor note, but nobody mentions anything approximating the totality of rosiness that I've experienced. I passed the vial around to my friends and they all agree that in the vial it doesn't particularly smell like rose, and on me it absolutely smells like rose. It's the weirdest thing, honestly. Now, despite my reknowned loathing of rose scents, I can actually imagine a few situations where I might wear this. It didn't give me a headache the way rose scents usually do, so I'm glad I have an Imp. I'm just very surprised at what my body chemistry did with this.

[kmasden]

I smell the roses too. I'm new to bpal and was lucky enough to get a few scents in a swap. I had sniffed the top of the vial and thought, nope, need to get rid of this one, but then decided to give it a teeny swipe. All I smelled was roses. Then I had to give it a bigger swipe to be sure and now i know the complexity of smelling a mix of things and smelling them change.

 

Wet - wow, zing, a very green lemony scent to my nose. Kind of like the lemon scented geranium leaf smell - it's the only thing i can think of that smells like that. A lemon scented leaf.

 

Next a bit of the peppery/sharp spice mixed with the lemon. Still very green, but very interesting and not really rosy.

 

Then the rose comes out very strong. I'm not a fan of roses so I was thinking "no way". As it continued to dry, the rose seemed to be mellowing and the lemony spice was back a bit. It is continuing to evolve into something that is definately rosy w/a teeny bit of citrusy green and pepper for me.

 

While I don't love roses, this may be a keeper - it is turning into a nice, curious scent that I really like.

 

I guess I would say it's like walking through a green, wet field up to an old abandoned house with trees out front that still have some softening overripe fruit falling from them. Then you enter the house, it's a little musty and cobwebby but in the windowsill is a vase of really deep red roses, droopy and warmed by a ray of sunlight and releasing their rosy scent throughout the house. Does that make sense?

 

Karin

[amrita]

In the bottle, I smell drenched herbs and incense.

When wet, the strong herbs and incense fade, and vetiver and rose step up. This rose smells like rosa alba, white rose.

 

I agree the smell is comforting. It reminds of hugging a clean wild furry animal and laying my face on its shaggy warm neck.

 

I smell tree trunks with sap oozing out of the bark.

 

No lemon, pine, or rice pudding for me.

 

After it dries, the scent meshes into warm smooth dark forest with a hint of rose, and fades within a couple of hours.

 

This has really grown on me in the few days that I've had it. It inspires a warm loving feeling that reminds me of the way I love my cats. Weird, but wonderful.

[LupaWulf]

From the bottle Wolfsbane smells a little punky... Sharp and I'm wondering if my imp went bad or something. (not rotten just... harshish...)

 

I took a chance and put it on, figured I could always snag a babywipe at work and remove it if necessary... WOW!

 

Initial transformation:

The sharp stuff went away, and I got pine! Not gross fake pine-sol pine, but evergreens from the deep woods.

 

As the day goes by, I think I caught whiffs of a slight bit of citris (lemon?)... With a few herbs which show through during the day. I allmost think I can catch a whiff of marigold? Or it might be wolfsbane itself.... I've never smelled it.

 

Dispite the way it smells in the bottle, I REALLY like it. Alot. *curls around imp*

 

I don't know about wolfsbane blooming to show a werewolf is about, but I certianly won't let go of this scent anytime soon.

[Falathwen]

I tried this blend on both my husband and myself. On my husband this was dark, green, and slightly rank like fresh medicinal herbs crushed in a wooden pestle. After a short while it faded on him without changing much. On me it started out more or less the same, though stronger. It is a strange scent, both repellent and fascinating. It reminded me of a passage in a book I loved by Madeleine L’Engle when a boy seer is made aware of the presence of evil by a smell like crushed stems of dandylions. After a while, a rose scent becomes more prominent, like a bloom in the briers. I was not expecting that, but it was intriguing.

[feline.by.design]

In Wolfsbane, my nosey-posey met with a clean pine scent that had something a little extra, making the overall fragrance a little sharper and bitter. Rather than the pine tree's pokey needles, I'm smelling something more evocative of the pine tree's resin. If I may make a comparison to Val San(s) Retour, Wolfsbane is a little similar, but darker.

 

However, like Val San(s) Retour, Wolfsbane does fade rather quickly. The pine wore off too quick to my liking, leaving something that my nose took to be a faint patchouli base, though I could be way off on that one.

 

Wolfsbane is a good scent, however my only real problem with it is that it fades quicker than I would like it to. It would be nice to try this out as a home fragrance, but it would also work well as a unisex fragrance or as a sort of "booster" scent to add to other scents. I'm one who would welcome all sorts of pine variants, so Wolfsbane gets the thumbs up from me, although I likely will not be picking up a bottle.

 

-doreen

[wolfie13]

I have the same impression as others upon initial sniff:

 

A green, woodsy, herbally smell - nice. The sort of scent I often really like.

 

However, upon wearing, it goes REALLY floral on me. Yuck. Into the swaps pile it

goes.

[etherealchild]

Wolfsbane..... not somethng that would ever peak my interest.... but it was a freebie, and I like to try everything atleast once.

 

In The BottleMusky, smokey masculinity...... tempered by something green and herbal......

 

 

Wet Accckkkkkk! yuck. bitter. very sharp and bitter. quickly calming down though, within seconds it falls back.... still has a bite...... ::twitches nose:: kind of a bitter pine sol? There is vertiver in here somewhere...... I know it. My skin is screaming for immediate removal. ::sniffs:: Nina's skin DOES NOT like this one. Nor does her nose.

 

Drydown It's gotten a lot better. I am still not a fan... but a lot of the bitterness has disolved..... herbal and musky...... reminds me of fog and smoke in the woods..... a guy might be able to pull this one off..... but I can't with my skin chemistry or tastes.....

 

Two Hours Later Smae as before..... but wait...... there is a sneaky floral trying to poke it's head through the vertiver..... several people have said rose.... but on me I am getting more of a pansy...... some sort of wildflower maybe? I still don't liek it though. No ammount of florals is going to fix the vertiver.

 

Verdict NO.NO.NO. lol.

[voodoobaby]

In the bottle: Dark, forest green. Woody, floral, and bittersweet.

 

Wearing: Um...rosewood? Is that what I smell? I know there's some sort of rose-related thing here. This is no girly rose, though, this is quite masculine. There's something that smells kind of like oakmoss here, but it probably isn't as oakmoss always turns to powder on me, and this doesn't. Maybe it's Spanish moss or some sort of evergreen.

 

Later: Bitter and less rosey. It's sharp, but still rounded. This is my kind of herbal blend--brooding and dark, as opposed to light and calm. Keeping the imp, for sure.

[gdogs]

wet on me, this one is very woody - first it is eucalyptus, then cedar. it feels good on my sinuses.

 

as it dries, there is a sweet tone to it, vanilla or amber, and maybe a touch of cinnamon.

 

then some sandlewood jumps into the mix. . . or is that just cedar with an amber back?

 

i don't know what wolfsbane smells like. . i imagine it smells like horehound, which has a minty scent. maybe that is what i'm smelling as eucalyptus. . .that menthol, minty scent.

 

i like it quite a bit, as the sweet wood is unusual. Not my favorite woody scent, tho.

[Renny]

Wolfsbane is probably very different than you'd expect it to be. I got it in my first order and it smelled nothing like I thought it would. It's VERY sharp, very herbal/woody scent. Kind of dark too. I can't really describe it any better than that... heh

[orangepoppy]

In the bottle Wolfsbane is slightly sweet and minty green. First on, a sweet floral lemon-pepper...hmmm, what’s next? Vetiver is next, rising to the top as in Saturnalia. Luckily the vetiver pulls back quite a lot over the course of a couple minutes and a rose blooms, it’s a sweet almost powdery rose, but with some greenery ala Rose Red. Wow, I don’t get any woods at all, my skin tends to eat them, alas. After drydown, Wolfsbane is an expansive (seems I always want to use the word “expansive” with vetiver scents) clean clear rose with some spice. Yes, I do like this quite a lot, but would like it more if it were woodsier. Oh, and it’s fading fairly fast, too. Will definitely use my imp because I'm going to have to slather this to make it last.

 

Oh wait, now the rose and a great deal of the sweetness is fading to the background (I've had it on about 20 mins) and there's something almost like spiced violets in there (!) and I think I do detect a bit of cypress or juniper?

 

Wolfsbane, you are quite a changeling, and I'll try you again, you mysterious canine, you.

 

eta: Tried you again, and Wolfsbane had tremendous throw. I was outside late last night and thinking I was smelling some new spring flowers on the breeze, when I realized it was me. Wow. Tremendous. I'm going to have fun experimenting with this one. Very natural scent, to me.

Edited March 15, 2005 by orangepoppy

[Barb25]

Wolfsbane was a freebie from the Lab.

 

I would never have picked it for myself, but it's actually quite nice. It is very herbally, as someone said a green and wet herbal scent, not like dried herbs at all. It also has woodsy undertones. I don't smell any rose, or any vetiver (thank gos, I hate vetiver!). I quite like it. I do want hubby to try it, I think it might be very nice on a man.

[tinyvulture]

when i first applied wolfsbane it smelled very soapy and herbal, like something i'd use to wash my face with. then when it dried it started to smell strongly of roses, and a little bit like baby powder.

[DiamondHeart]

There is something familiar in this scent! I absolutely love it, but I cannot for the life of me figure out what that top note is!

 

It is very herbal to me. Maybe... rosemary? Sage, perhaps.... there's a bit of cream to it as well, and it just screams GREEN!

 

Hence why I wore it on St. Patrick's Day!

 

~Diamond~

[UltraViolet]

In the bottle

herbal but sweet and nice smelling.

 

Wet

Smells like sweet roses. I like it so far. There is a green bite to it and a woodsy herbal note as well.

There may also be another floral in here besides the rose...a white flower, maybe jasmine. I can't tell which.

 

10 Minutes

It's trying to turn soapy because of the rose and another ingredient.

It's less biting green now and more woodsy.

There's some milky/soapy/funky smell peeking out in the background.

 

20 minutes

Very soapy now and there's an undernote now that is not a good smell.

 

Throw:

Medium

 

Scent category:

Floral/Woodsy

 

Summary

It's a strong scent.

It reminds me of Rose Red and The Empress a bit in the way of the bitey green/floral combo. In all of these three scents you have a strong floral (rose) with the scent of the rose stem too in the form of the green or woodsy notes.

This one is sweeter than those however, and a wee bit wooodsier.

 

Purchase again?

No.

 

1-5 rating, 5 being best.

2