Progress in Essential Oils

By: Brian M. Lawrence, consultant

Posted: October 25, 2006, from the November 2006 issue of P&F magazine.

Genet Oil

An analysis of an oil produced from the flowers of Spartium junceum L. (genet) collected from their naturalized habitat in Tuscany, Italy, was performed by Miraldi et al. (2004). The components identified in this oil were as follows:

2-heptanone (0.2%)

alpha-thujene (0.5%)

camphene (0.1%)

sabinene (0.2%)

1-octen-3-ol (0.9%)

myrcene (0.1%)

alpha-phellandrene (0.1%)

delta-3-carene (0.3%)

alpha-terpinene (0.2%)

p-cymene (0.6%)

limonene (0.2%)

beta-ocimene* (0.1%)

linalool (0.1%)

methyl chavicol (0.4%)

hexyl 2-methylbutyrate (0.7%)

methyl carvacrol (0.1%)

(E)-anethole (0.3%)

beta-damascenone* (0.3%)

hexyl hexanoate (0.3%)

3-dodecanone (0.9%)

tetradecanone* (0.3%)

(E,E)-alpha-farnesene (1.0%)

ethyl dodecanoate (0.1%)

ethyl tetradecanoate (0.8%)

methyl hexadecanoate (0.2%)

ethyl hexadecanoate (1.8%)

methyl octadecanoate (2.0%)

octadecyl acetate (3.7%)

tricosane (22.9%)

tetracosane (8.9%)

pentacosane (16.1%)

*correct isomer not identified

Trace amounts (< 0.1%) of beta-pinene, gamma-terpinene, octanol, alpha-terpineol and tetradecanol also were found in this oil.

The data presented by Miraldi et al. is quite different from that reported earlier (Lawrence 1981 and 1993) for the composition of genet absolute.

This is only an excerpt of the full article that appeared in P&F Magazine, but you can purchase the full-text version.