With a long history of use in herbal medicine, osmanthus is a plant that is still commonly used for flavoring and in perfumery. This is a plant with powerful essential oil as well as the ability to decorate your backyard garden.
If you’re not growing osmanthus yet, it’s a large shrub you’ve got to consider.
Often referred to simply as the fragrant olive, osmanthus is a popular street tree in China that has an intoxicating aroma—and some powerful symbolism, too.
What Does Osmanthus Mean?
Osmanthus is the generic name for a plant more commonly known as the fragrant olive. It is an evergreen tree or upright shrub that has sweetly-scented flowers often used in herbal medicine, confectionary, and tea flavoring.
It’s known by many nicknames, including tea olive, sweet olive, and kinmokusei.
The generic name, Osmanthus, is derived from the Greek word osma, which means fragrant, along with anthos, which means flower. The full name Osmanthus fragrans makes a lot of sense given that the plant has a cloying aroma.
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