Essential Oil Laurel Leaf (15 mL)

Essential Oil Laurel Leaf

Laurus Nobilis has a spicy scent that is uplifting. Ancient Greeks used leaves of the laurel tree to crown their victors and scholars. The laurel tree is a small shrub or tree, originating in the eastern Mediterranean countries. The leaves are distilled to produce a greenish-yellow essential oil. It has an agreeable odour reminiscent of cajeput, although the latter is softer and more acrid.

AROMA: A top note with a strong aroma, Laurel Leaf Essential Oil has a fresh, strong but sweet, camphoraceous, and somewhat spicy odor.

HISTORY OF USE

Laurel leaves were used as a strewing herb in the time of the Elizabethans. Bay leaves are placed in boxes of figs to keep away weevils; and a leaf or two in jars of flour or pulses will similarly discourage insects at home.

Laurel essential oil has been and still is used in a great many medicaments, for bath lotions, and in antiseptic soaps, as well as in food flavouring, and perfumery. In veterinary practice, it is included in cleansing ointments for farm animals.

No tree has been as much praised for its elegance, fragrance and therapeutic properties as the laurel, sweet bay or bay laurel, to list but a few of its names in English. Laurus is a genus of unisexual, hardy, evergreen shrubs or trees which originates from Asia Minor, but has been well established in all the Mediterranean countries and further north for many centuries; the laurel tree was introduced to Italy before the time of Christ, for instance. It arrived in Britain around the sixteenth century, and can flourish, although it is smaller in size than in warmer habitats (where it can grow as high as 19m (65 ft). In Greece, wild bay trees are very common, as they are in south and west France.

The bay laurel has blackish green bark, and evergreen, shiny, lanceolate leaves which exude a wonderful aroma when crushed. The insignificant, creamy-yellow flowers form in clusters in April on both male and female trees, but it is only the female which produces the small blackish-blue berries. Other aromatic trees of the laurel family are the camphor laurel (Cinnamomum camphora) of south-east Asia, the Californian laurel or Oregon myrtle (Umbellularia californica), and the sassafras (Sassafras albidum) of the eastern United States. Laurus nobilis, the true laurel, must never be confused with the tree called the common laurel, which is an evergreen ornamental cherry (Prunus laurocerasus) and can be poisonous (the leaves contain a small proportion of prussic acid).