Violet leaf absolute smells of cucumber and wet earth rather than of violets. That comes from two green aldehydes, nonadienal and nonenal, which are among the most powerful green notes in perfumery. The flower's violet smell comes from ionones, and those are mostly in the flower rather than the leaf. Extracts of the plant showed cell-protecting and antibacterial activity in testing.^[1] French and Egyptian material can be told apart by their marker compounds, which makes origin checking possible.^[2]