Articles by Martin Watt & others are below Articles not by Martin are indicated With about 30 years of writing articles you will find some repetition but I improved them in 2018. Spelling has been reset to UK ise rather than US ize other than where the sources are US. Essential Oils Production & Conservation Rosemary oil (Tunisian) - growth and production Rose oil production in Turkey by Butch Owen Rose distillation - in Turkey in the year 2000 Cinnamon oils What you need to know Lemon oil-the myths and hype removed Peppermint oil-the myths and hype removed Conservation issues - General Rosewood oil - & global warming Rosewood oil - why not to use it Sandalwood oils-Why I oppose their use Long term threat to Frankincense trees in Ethiopia. Direct link Endangered species still being exploited in aromatherapy and perfumery. A very long article. By Cropwatch Conservation issues a slide show. by Tony Burfield. Buying Essential Oils - and Absolutes. By the late Bernie Hephrun Hydrosols or Distillation Waters – production, safety, etc. Natural Perfumery vs Synthetics Birch oil-an old review of bad research ROSEMARY OIL (Tunisian) Its growth and production By Martin Watt In 1995 I was part of an aromatherapy tour visiting Tunisia organised by Clive Bendon of Quality Analysis Ltd. UK. qal.uk.com The prime objective was to see the rosemary oil being produced, although we also hoped to see Neroli production. Rosemary grows wild in Tunisia and many of the hills are covered with the bushes - see image below. All photographs © 1995 copyright M. Watt. The bushes are wild and not subjected to fertilisers and pesticides. However, if the plants were originally planted on these hills only a historian of French colonial agriculture would know. My suspicion is they were planted - maybe a hundred years or more ago - because there are many pieces of old clay pots lying around. We should remember that the French fragrance industry exploited most of their colonies for fragrance materials. The area we headed to was about 70 miles inland from the Mediterranean coast close to the village of Medjeb el bab. Here lies a large plain covered with various crops. In the distance can be seen the low hills where the rosemary grows. As you approach the hills you can see the green shimmer of the rosemary. In places you could see what looked like bare scars running across the hills (see above). These scars were firebreaks, which in this hot dry climate were badly needed. Just imagine a hill covered in aromatic plants such as rosemary catching fire! As we drove up the dirt roads in the foothills, you could see other plants dotted between the rosemary. These were the occasional Myrtle bush, plus quick growing Eucalyptus trees planted to stabilise the loose rocky soil and to provide firewood. The track wound its way up the hill and in so doing it divided the hill into separate sectors. This meant that as the rosemary was harvested, there was no need for the workers to scramble up the steep slopes. Instead they used donkeys that could amble along the road until they reached the rosemary heap near the still. The donkeys were loaded up with huge bundles of rosemary tied up with sacking. Although the load looked huge, it was of course mostly air and so not too heavy. We were told that the rosemary could be harvested twice a year. One hillside was harvested then the still was shifted to another one. By the time the other areas had been harvested over a 3-month cycle, the original plants had regrown and could be harvested again. Then the whole area was left alone until the next year. All harvesting was done by hand by the men from the nearest local villages. They camped out on the hillsides during the production season under simple shelters made of a few wooden poles and plastic sheeting. There were no toilet facilities other than a hole in the ground so you could say the plants were truly organically grown! All their needs of food, water, etc. were bought up from the village in pickup trucks. The only things needed for producing the rosemary oil that were not available on the hills was water and the stills themselves. As can be seen from the photos, the stills are large thick walled steel drums about 2 metres in diameter and about 1.5m high. A platform is made of soil and rocks so that the still can be placed over the fire. The primary still is filled with water and freshly cut rosemary. This process is known as hydro distillation and is exactly the same as cooking your vegetables. The fact the herb is immersed in water means the oil is not so chemically degraded as can occur with hot steam distillation. The conical lid is then placed over the still and is partly sealed with mud. The lid has a pipe that leads the aromatic vapours rising from the rosemary into the cooling condenser next to the primary still. The cooling condenser is filled with cold water with a coil running though it which condenses the hot still vapours. At the base is the receptacle in which the condensate of oil and water falls. Once there, as the mixture cools, the oil floats to the top and is siphoned off into another container. Finally, the oil is poured into barrels and taken to the storage areas by truck. Once the rosemary charge has been exhausted, (that is a judgement made by the foreman based on experience), it is forked out onto the hill and dries out in the bright sun. It is this spent material that is used to fire the still (see below). Therefore, the whole process can be considered as extremely 'environmentally friendly' as only the water is taken to the site. Everything else comes from the soil and the sun. The smell coming from the still during the processing is divine. If only you could bottle the air! With this kind of open-air distillation a lot of the highly volatile gases that occur in the plant are lost to the atmosphere. The only way such highly volatile compounds can be captured is to use cold processes such as solvent extraction. However, often these natural compounds are so unstable that they cannot be captured and preserved. The only way to experience them is to grow the plants, or be present where they grow. Then on a hot day go and breath the air, now that is TRUE aromatherapy. Despite the loss of "top note" volatiles to the air, this Tunisian hydro distilled rosemary is a top quality oil. Any hydro distilled rosemary oil will be far superior to steam distilled oil. The way to tell a steam-distilled oil from hydro distilled is quiet simple. If the oil smells more like eucalyptus the chances are it is steam distilled. A good quality hydro distilled rosemary should smell almost the same as the fresh herb. Turkish hydrodistilled rosemary has a similar fragrance to the Tunisian oil. Back to article start Source and copyright: aromamedical.org Back to index Rose distillation in Turkey In June 2000 I saw the full production cycle of Turkish rose oil. See also the text below of my talk on the trip. Please also see the update 2015 from Gulbirlik below. I was invited there by Butch Owen (above), an American who lived in Turkey for around 20 years. Since he speaks the language like a native, he has direct contacts with growers, producers and miscellaneous other people. He is treated by them as an old friend, which of course opened doors that might be closed to other people. The organisation that I visited was the State controlled co-operative. They have a large office, laboratory and cosmetics production building. On the same site they process small amounts of rose concrete. They have 5 distillation plants in the Isparta area (consisting of a total of 80 primary stills and 10 secondary stills). The roses come into those from the surrounding small farms. It was interesting that the small family-owned farms did not have vast fields of roses, but rather they had many small fields interspersed by fields growing all kinds of other crops. Each farm seemed to have just a few rose fields making self distillation uneconomic. Hence the reason for co-operative distillation facilities. The bushes are extremely prolific in flowers and keep producing roses for a few weeks. This means picking occurs almost every day. It was interesting that the rose bushes are left in the same location for 40 years or more, adding just animal manure as fertiliser. They trim the bushes back annually, and every 8 or 10 years they are cut to the ground. The rose bushes are about waist height making for easier picking. This is mostly done by the women from the villages who are paid by weight picked. The speed that they can pluck the flowers from the bushes is quite remarkable. The night before we arrived it had rained hard, so we thought harvesting might be postponed. However, the following morning it was sunny and they picked the flowers as normal. We were told it just meant they had to get them to the still a bit quicker than normal to prevent fermentation. Picking begins before the sun rises and stops around 11 A.M. Once picked, the roses are put in sacks which are taken by tractor trailers or old farm trucks to the nearest distillation plant. On arrival the sacks are quickly emptied into 40 year old seasoned copper stills.