Aromatic Adventures

It is mid spring here in NZ and my citrus trees are really starting to blossom despite starting their life in poor clay soil with wet feet. I moved them to higher slightly better drained ground just over a year ago. Most of the trees are blossoming so I decided to have a go at distilling some sweet orange blossom as this tree was laden with flowers, far too many to form fruit. Ideally I would have liked to use a smaller copper still than my 20 litre copper Alembic still- but it is all I have at the moment. I hand picked the open flowers early in the day to preserve the aroma on them. I will be posting photos when I can access them! I picked approximately 120 gm which filled about 2 cups and pakced these in the column of my still so they were  the water level. I had pre filled the base of the still with boiling water to speed up the heating and my still sits on a gas stove top element with speciality plumbing for the water and drainage. I set up the condenser and popp...

I am posting some links here as provided in the workshop for reference purposes. These links are open for all to access as long as usual copy write is respected. 1. Work Shop 1: Bounty from Down under Geographical differences in chemotypes of Manuka Oil -link to full article here Ecological differences between manuka and kanuka described here 2. Work Shop 2: Aesthetic Aromatherapy References  (a) Touw, M (1982). Roses in the Middle Ages, Economic Botany, 36 (1), 71-83 (b) Babael, A. et al (2007). Microsatellite analysis of Damask rose (Rosa damascena Mill.) accessions from various regions in Iran reveals multiple genotypes, Plant Biology, 7:12, 1471-2229 www.aromatours.com for trips to Turkish rose fields   3. Work Shop 3: Aromatic Hydrosols and essential oil mouthwash for radiation induced mucositis Published articles by Wendy relating to doctoral research avialable here at Google Scholar Collaborative Studies with Dr. Myung-haeng Hu...