The fading forests of sensual ylang-ylang

The ylang-ylang trade sustains about 10,000 producers in Comoros, which is significant in a country with a population of less than a million. But it also drives deforestation.

Photos: Marco Longari/AFP

Sun on sandalwood: Sitti Fatima Mohamed, her face covered with a traditional msindanu mask, picks ylang-ylang flowers in Mbambao Mtsanga, Comoros.

About 60% of the world’s ylang-ylang, a prized perfume oil extracted from a yellow, star-shaped flower, comes from the tiny volcanic islands of Comoros.

Thousands of women spend their days under the sun harvesting flowers to sell to distillers by the kilogramme. For sunscreen, they wear a traditional msindanu mask, obtained by rubbing sandalwood on coral. Distillers typically extract ylang-ylang oil using decades-old stills technology that takes up to 300kg of wood to fuel the extraction of a single kilogramme of oil.

The trade sustains about 10,000 producers, which is significant in a country with a population of less than a million. But it also drives deforestation. Comoros lost 80% of its natural forests between 1995 and 2014 and demographic pressure on the islands means farmers continue to require more arable land.

Solar spice: Cloves, another key Comoran crop, are left to dry on blankets beside a power array in Lingoni, on the archipelago’s Anjouan island.

Unwilding: A minibus taxi lumbers along a winding road through increasingly deforested mountains in Tsembehou, the third-largest town on Anjouan island.

Canopy harvest: A worker plucks ylang-ylang flowers from the treetops in Mbambao Mtsanga.

Bloomboxing: Flower field workers fill a jute sack with ylang-ylang blossoms destined for distillation.

Logging in: Alihadhur Said, 70, sources and sells timber to the wood-fuelled steam distillation plants that extract the precious oil of the ylang ylang flowers.

Petal to the metal: Ylang-ylang field workers remove flower residue from a rough alembic at the end of the oil extraction process at their still in Mbambao Mtsanga.