Cananga Oil

#### Cananga Oil. The true **Canang**a **Oil **of today is the total essential oil, water-distilled from the flowers of **Cananga Odorata **(forma macrophylla) in the northern and western parts of Java (Indonesia). There are several qualities of **Java**** ****Cananga**** ****Oil,**** **but they are all distilled by the so-called direct-fire method (flowers in water, fire under the pot, and no heating jacket). This method is used for a great part of the ylang-ylang oil production in Nossi-Bé and in the Comoro Islands, but not in Réunion (see **Ylang-Ylang Oil**). Although cananga oil is essentially a "complete oil', the yield obtained in Java is considerably poorer than the yields of ylang-ylang oil (same tree) in the Comores, Nossi-Bé, etc. This is due to a very primitive distillation, and to poorly selected flower material; it is also partly due to the fact that the cananga flowers are crushed when packed in the still, while ylang-ylang flowers are not. The flower is extremely delicate, and easily loses its fragrance when damaged. Since World War II, production of cananga oil in Java has increased rapidly, while production in the Philippines (earlier home of the ylang-ylang tree) is negligible. The annual world production of **Cananga Oil **is about 20 metric tons (1959) which is almost as high as the pre-war figure. Java cananga oil is a yellow to orange-yellow or slightly greenish-yellow, somewhat viscous liquid of sweet-floral, balsamic and tenacious odor. The initial notes are woody-leathery with a fresh-floral undertone, a characteristic combination. The odor type is much "heavier" than that of ylang-ylang and it is also more tenacious than the first and second grades of that oil. Cananga oil is useful in soap perfumery and for the popular "leathery" notes in men's fragrances where it combines well with castoreum, calamus, birch tar oil rectified, cyclamal, creosol, copaiba oil, isobutyl cinnamate, isoeugenol, labdanum products, guaiacwood oil, nerol, para-cresyl salicylate, oakmoss products, etc. and with fougère bases, violet bases, etc. The superior stability and tenacity of the odor of cananga oil makes this material interesting for soap perfumes where ylang-ylang oil is of comparatively little value. The fact that far more cananga oil is available than the 10 to 20 tons annually produced indicates that some kind of large-scale adulteration takes place. The most obvious one is most likely a "false denomination of merchandise", rather than plain adulteration. A mixture of high-boiling fractions ("tails") from the distillation of ylang-ylang oil in the Nossi-Bé—Comoro area will inevitably end up under the label of **Cananga**** ****Oil**** ****—Java**! The principal difference lies in the fact that cananga oil is truly a complete oil, not a fraction of an oil. This, of course, leads certain suppliers to perform a number of manipulations with the ylang-ylang fractions in order to introduce the "missing notes", e.g. by adding synthetic perfume materials, perfume compounds, terpenes, fractions of other essential oils, etc. Very crude adulteration may take place locally (in Indonesia), but this has become rare. In most cases, these adulterations are easily detectable by olfactory analysis.