# Cyprus powder

**Polvere di Cipro**

**Known today as.** Poudre de Chypre, a perfumed toilet powder.

Kind: Compound

## What did Canale use it for?

In the oil for the bewitched (ch. 9).

## What does modern science say?

A perfume.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **atranol and chloratranol**: the fragrance allergens of oak moss
- **evernic acid**: 

**Mechanism.** A scented powder of oak moss (*Evernia prunastri*): its atranol and chloroatranol were judged by the EU’s scientific committee to be the fragrance allergens that caused the most contact allergies, and Regulation 2017/1410 barred cosmetics containing them from being placed on the Union market from 23 August 2019, and from being made available there from 23 August 2021.

**Dose.** Allergenic on the skin.

**Standing.** A perfumery base (chypre); the European Union prohibits atranol and chloratranol in cosmetics.

## What lore surrounds it?

The name preserves an old tradition: oakmoss powder scented as *poudre de Chypre* was in use by the sixteenth century, long before the modern chypre perfumes. Guerlain made an “Eau de Chypre” in 1840, and the modern family was defined in 1917 by François Coty’s perfume of that name, built on a Mediterranean accord of bergamot, labdanum, and oakmoss that became the template for a whole line of descendants.

## What did the older authorities say?

**Pliny.** His cypros is another thing from the chypre of the perfumers: “a tree of Egypt, with the leaves of the ziziphus, and seeds like coriander, white and odoriferous,” boiled in olive oil and pressed, sold at five denarii the pound, the best from the Nile near Canopus; some, he says, hold it to be the tree the Italians call ligustrum.

## Sources

- “Chypre” (reference article).
- Pliny the Elder, *Natural History* 12.51, trans. J. Bostock & H. T. Riley (1855), Perseus Digital Library.
- Wikipedia, “Evernic acid,” en.wikipedia.org (read 2 October 2026).
- Wikipedia, “Evernia prunastri,” en.wikipedia.org (read 2 October 2026).
- European Commission (2017). *Regulation (EU) 2017/1410 prohibiting atranol, chloratranol and HICC in cosmetic products*.

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*Cyprus powder.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-03. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/cyprus-powder

Historical description, not medical advice.