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English Lavender is much more aromatic
and has a far greater delicacy of odour than the French, and the
oil fetches ten times the price. The principal English Lavender
plantations are at Carshalton and Wallington in Surrey, Hitchin
in Herts, Long Melford in Suffolk, Market Deeping (Lincs) and
in Kent, near Canterbury. Mitcham in Surrey used to be the centre
of the Lavender-growing industry, but with the extension of London
the famous Lavender plantations of Mitcham and surrounding districts
have been largely displaced by buildings, and during the War the
cultivation of Lavender was still further diminished to give place
to food crops, so that in 1920 not more than ten acres under Lavender
cultivation could be stated to be found in the whole of Surrey,
though some of the oil is still distilled in the neighbourhood,
and the finest products continue to be described as 'Mitcham Lavender
Oil.'
ENGLISH LAVENDER (Lavandula vera), the common narrow-leaved variety,
grows 1 to 3 feet high (in gardens, occasionally somewhat taller),
with a short, but irregular, crooked, much-branched stem, covered
with a yellowish-grey bark, which comes off in flakes, and very
numerous, erect, straight, broom-like, slender, bluntly-quadrangular
branches, finely pubescent, with stellate hairs. The leaves are
opposite, sessile, entire, linear, blunt; when young, white with
dense stellate hairs on both surfaces; their margins strongly
revolute; when full grown, 1 1/2 inch long, green with scattered
hairs above, smoothly or finely downy beneath, and the margins
only slightly revolute. The flowers are produced in terminating,
blunt spikes from the young shoots, on long stems. The spikes
are composed of whorls or rings of flowers, each composed of from
six to ten flowers, the lower whorls more distant from one another.
The flowers themselves are very shortly stalked, three to five
together in the axils of rhomboidal, brown, thin, dry bracts.
The majority of the oil yielded by the flowers is contained in
the glands on the calyx.
Our Lavender Oil:
Lavendula officinalis
org., Demeter,Dist., France/Italy
Primavera Life Fine aromatic lavender
Lavender Essential Oil has a warm rich floral scent with anti-viral,
anti-bacterial, and anti-fungal properties. It is both relaxing,and
warming to the skin as it increases circulation.
Possible Aromatherapy and Skin care Use: Acne, allergies, anxiety,
asthma, athlete's foot, bruises, burns, chicken pox, colic, cuts,
cystitis, depression, dermatitis, dysmenorrhea, earache, flatulence,
headache, hypertension, insect bites, insect repellant, itching,
labor pains, migrane, oily skin, rheumatism, scabies, scars, sores,
sprains, strains, stress, stretch marks, vertigo, whooping cough.
French Lavender oil is distilled from two distinct plants, found
in the mountain districts of Southern France, both included under
the name of L. officinalis by the sixteenth-century botanists,
and L. vera by De Candolle. The French botanist Jordan has separated
them under the name of L. delphinensis, the Lavender of Dauphine,
and L. fragrans. The oils from the two plants are very similar,
but the former yields oils with the higher percentage of esters
lAVENDER, fine
Lavender is a shrubby plant indigenous to the mountainous regions
of the countries bordering the western half of the Mediterranean,
and cultivated extensively for its aromatic flowers in various
parts of France, in Italy and in England and even as far north
as Norway. It is also now being grown as a perfume plant in Australia.
The fragrant oil to which the odour of Lavender flowers is due
is a valuable article of commerce, much used in perfumery, and
to a lesser extent in medicine. The fine aromatic smell is found
in all parts of the shrub, but the essential oil is only produced
from the flowers and flower-stalks |
