Sandalwood (Agmarked) Essential Oil

Botanical Name: Santalum Album

Size: 5ml

Weight: 45g

Santalum Album is native to Asia, and cultivated in tropical climes. It is a parasitic evergreen tree commonly known as Sandalwood growing up to 9 meters tall. Sandalwood often intertwines and parasites the roots of other trees.

Sandalwood is slow growing, endangered, protected, government controlled and not harvested until maturity at 40 years old, making Sandalwood and essential oil of Sandalwood very expensive.

Sandalwood oil has traditionally been used in religious rituals and ceremonies, as an incense and for its medicinal properties.

The production of the oil is scrupulously controlled by the government of Mysore, the very best oil being 'agmarked' or approved by the Ministry of Agriculture. Only the heartwood of mature trees is used and current reports from Mysore suggest that the use of sandalwood for carving and furniture making is to be curtailed in order to ensure a sufficiency of trees for future oil extraction. The oil is present to some degree in all parts of the wood and is responsible for the formation of the heartwood. It is not secreted by the wood. This distinguishes it from other woods such as guaiacum and sanders whose heartwoods are formed through the action of resin which is secreted especially when the bark and outer wood are damaged. Sandalwood as a building material was much esteemed in Asia because of its resistance to attack by insects.

Sandalwood has long had a reputation as an aphrodisiac. It is an intimate perfume, in distinction to most other essential oils, largely because of its very slow rate of evaporation, which means that one has to be quite close to smell it at all (except in the case of its being evaporated in which case it can be quite pervasive). It may be that its aphrodisiac reputation arises from its inclusion (as the active ingredient) in traditional medicines for impotence, most of which are topical lotions or, more probably because its perfume is faintly animal/non-floral or, as more descriptive sources have expressed it, "Naughty!"
 

Origin: mountainous districts of Mysore in Southern India

Size details are the liquid contents in millilitres
Weight is the unpacked weight of the item