Lavender

Botanical Name - Lavendula


Category - Aromatic


Form - Dry


Part Used - FLower


General Information - "Lavandula (common name lavender) is a genus of 47 known species of flowering plants in the mint family, Lamiaceae. It is native to the Old World and is found in Cape Verde and the Canary Islands, and from Europe across to northern and eastern Africa, the Mediterranean, southwest Asia to southeast India.

Many members of the genus are cultivated extensively in temperate climates as ornamental plants for garden and landscape use, for use as culinary herbs, and also commercially for the extraction of essential oils. The most widely cultivated species, Lavandula angustifolia, is often referred to as lavender, and there is a color named for the shade of the flowers of this species. Despite its use over centuries in traditional medicine and cosmetics, there is no high-quality clinical evidence that lavender has any effects on diseases or improves health."


Phytochemicals - Some 100 individual phytochemicals have been extracted from lavender oil, including major contents of linalyl acetate (30-55%), linalool (20-35%), tannins (5-10%), and caryophyllene (8%), with lesser amounts of sesquiterpenoids, perillyl alcohols, esters, oxides, ketones, cineole, camphor, beta-ocimene, limonene, caproic acid, and caryophyllene oxide. The relative amounts of these compounds vary considerably among lavender species.