Cedrela Odorata Oil

#### Cedrela Odorata. From the wood of a large tree indigenous to the West Indies, Central and South America, an essential oil is steam distilled under the above name. The wood is collected for the purpose of making cigar boxes, closets, cabinets, bookshelves, etc. or for plywood. The wood is also known as **"Cigarbox-Wood", "Indian Mahogany" **or "**Sugar-Crate Wood**". It is a fragrant wood, and from the waste materials produced in the lumbering of the boards, the essential oil can be produced at a fairly low cost. The main supplier is Brazil. Occasionally, lots of **Cedrela**** ****Oil**** **are offered from Cuba or Jamaica, where cigarboxes are also made from locally grown Cedrela Odorata and similar species. Oil of **Cedrela Odorata **is a greenish-yellow to olive-colored liquid of pleasant, dry-woody and powerful odor, reminiscent of cedarwood oil, Texas and cubeb oil or clove leaf oil sesquiterpenes with an undertone like carrot seed oil, however, without the fattiness of this. The odor bears some resemblance to the odor of the **Cyperus**** **oils. Cedrela oil blends well with cedarwood oil (Texas) and its derivatives, with ionones and methylionones, pine needle oils, isobornylacetate, isobutylquinoline, oakmoss, rosemary oil, etc. The oil is used mainly in soap perfumes of the woody types, Oriental types, etc., and in the perfumes for disinfectants, insecticides, air-freshener sprays, etc. in industrial perfumes, etc. Up to the present, the oil has been given very little attention, but it is constantly available in modest quantities. In northern India, another species of the tree is grown, **Cedrela**** ****Toona**. The wood of this tree is fragrant, but the yield of essential oil by steam distillation is extremely small, perhaps due to the very high boiling point of the constituents of this oil. Experimentally, a two-step extraction of the wood with hydrocarbon solvents yielded a viscous, orange-colored oil. However, this **Cedrela**** ****Toona**** ****Oil**** **is not commercially available, and the oil may be of very little interest to the perfumers. The author has no personal experience with the so-called **Cedrela Toona Resinoid**** **which is extracted from this wood. The tree, **Toona**** ****Calanthas**** **grows in the Philippines and is used locally for the production of cigarboxes. See also monograph on **Cangerana**.