Elecampane Oil

#### Elecampane Oil. The roots and rhizomes of **Inlua Helenium**, a tall plant related to the sunflower, have been known and used in medicine for many centuries. The roots contain an essential oil which can be isolated by steam distillation. The extraction products of elecampane root are described under **Elecampane Absolute **(previous monograph). **Elecampane Oil **is produced from the dried comminuted roots which are collected from cultivated plants in Belgium, Germany, France, and southeastern Europe, or from wild-growing plants in southeastern Europe and Asia, in particular India and China, the countries in which the plant originated. Distillation takes place mainly in France from imported roots. "Essence d'**Aunée**", as the oil is called in France, is a semi-solid mass or a viscous liquid which often displays a mass of crystals. The color is dark yellow to brownish-yellow, occasionally pale yellow and turbid. It is dry-woody in odor, but also sweet, somewhat ambre- or honeylike with a fatty undertone. The odor has some resemblance to those of calamus, costus and cedrela. The flavor is warm, woody-rootlike, slightly bitter, nauseating, reminiscent of calamus oil and manevoro oil. **Elecampane Oil **is useful in perfumery for heavy-woody, Oriental or ambre-like bases, and it blends well with cananga, cinnamon, labdanum, lavender, mimosa, olibanum, orris, tuberose, violet, cedarwood, patchouli, nitromusks, etc. It has been found as an adulterant in **Costus**** ****Oil**** **where it can be quite difficult to trace olfactorily. The tenacity and soft woodiness of the odor of elecampane oil makes it an attractive fixative in perfumes. It has very little application in flavors. Chinese Elecampane Oil has a somewhat harsher topnote than have the European oils. The annual production of elecampane oil is less than one metric ton at present, and the oil is still comparatively expensive.