Chandan S. Chanotiya and Chandra S. Mathela,*

Abstract: The essential oils isolated from leaves, berries and twigs of Juniperus wallichiana collected from areas near Milam glacier were dominated by sabinene (46.7%), besides α-pinene (6.6%) and terpinen-4-ol (6.5%) in leaf oil, while the berry oil contained higher content of sabinene (50.6%) and α-pinene (8.1%). The twig essential oil contained α-cadinol (9.8%), terpinen-4-ol (8.4%), oplopanone (8.0%) and epi-α-cadinol (5.0%) and almost no monoterpenes. Indian oils revealed a higher percentage of monoterpenoids in the leaf and berry oils while the twig oil contained sesquiterpenoids as major compounds.

Juniperus wallichiana Hook. f. et Thoms. ex Brandis, also known as black Juniper, belongs to family Cupressaceae and is a high altitude shrub which occurs at 3,000 to 4,400 m and is distributed in Western Himalayan region (1,2). Juniperus wallichiana is used as incense in Buddhist temples (2). The Indian taxonomists place J. wallichiana Hook. f. et Thoms. ex Brandis synonyms with Juniperus indica Bertol. and Juniperus pseudosabina Fischer et Meyer (2). However, Adams in recent publications on Junipers clearly separates these three taxa as distinct species based on results of both the oil and their DNA studies (3). Farjon (4) has reported J. wallichiana as a synonym of the J. indica but whether these are conspecific is still an open question. The systematics of Juniperus wallichiana of the eastern hemisphere has revealed sabinene (31.8%), α-pinene (9.4%), terpinen-4-ol (4.5%) and nezukol (4.0%) as the major constituents (3) while α-pinene (52.1%), cedrol (10.7%) and sabinene (5.8%) have been reported from J. pseudosabina oil (3). Adams et al. (5) reported chemical variations in the leaf oil of J. indica Bertol. from Nepal with sabinene (19.4–31.3%), ß-thujone (4.5–25.8%), terpinen-4-ol (3.7–13.0%) and trans-sabinyl acetate (7.6–24.3%) as the principal constituents. Thus, the above reports confirm that all the three species viz., J. wallichiana, J. indica and J. pseudosabina have distinct terpenoid compositions and cannot be marked as synonyms of each other. Adams has reported the J. wallichiana oil with moderate amount of sabinene from East Nepal (3). We compare the chemical composition of J. wallichiana leaf, berry and twig oils collected from near glacier of north western region of Kumaun Himalaya.