Stirlingia Latifolia Oil

#### Stirlingia Latifolia. From a small, wild growing plant in the west Australian coastal districts, an essential oil can be obtained by steam distillation of the entire overground parts of the plant. The material is distilled without being dried first. **Stirlingia Latifolia Oil **has very little importance or application in perfumery, but deserves a brief mention because of the peculiar fact that it consists almost entirely of **Acetophenone**. This material is readily available as a synthetic chemical at a very low cost and, furthermore, it can be used in perfumes only in trace amounts because of its power and harshness in odor. The oil of stirlingia latifolia is not regularly produced or commercially available. Occasional lots of the oil offered on the perfumery market may well consist of synthetic acetophenone with minute additions of other perfume materials. It serves no purpose to use such artificial oils in perfumery. A true oil of **Stirlingia Latifolia **is pale yellow when freshly distilled, and smells strongly herbaceous, sweet and floral-haylike, not nearly as repulsively sharp or harsh as pure acetophenone. Materials, suitable for "rounding-off" the odor of synthetic acetophenone are, e. g.: heliotropine, cassione, anisyl acetone, anisic alcohol or anisyl acetate, cinnamic alcohol, methylcinnamic alcohol, vanillin, zingerone, anethole, dihydrosafrole, isoeugenol, mimosa concrète, ylang-ylang oil, etc., but the fact remains that Mother Nature can camouflage the presence of 95 to 98% of acetophenone in an essential oil to such a degree of perfection that one must smell it to believe it. We have numerous examples of this natural art of perfumery in essential oils.