🧴 Essential Oils

TRUE LAVENDER Lavandula angustifolia

Key Properties

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🧴 Lavender products 🧴 Name of the species 🧴 Grown and harvested 🧴 Steam distillation (SD) 🧴 Hydrodistillation (HD) 🧴 Analysis of HD and SD oils 🧴 HD and SD compared 🧴 Concrete and absolutes 🧴 Analysis of the absolutes 🧴 Table 1 for each absolute 🧴 ISO documents 🧴 References
Introduction
Lavandula angustifolia Mill.

Species

BinomialLavandula angustifolia
Accepted nameLavandula angustifolia Mill.
POWO statusaccepted
FamilyLamiaceae
GenusLavandula
IPNI identifierurn:lsid:ipni.org:names:449008-1
ISO standardISO 3515:2002

Source: Govaerts R. (ed.), World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP), Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, accessed on 21/09/2026.

Source: ISO 3515:2002.

Which lavender products does this page describe?

In the ISO catalogue for ICS 71.100.60, ISO 3515:2002 is titled “Oil of lavender (Lavandula angustifolia Mill.)”. Léva and Gál (2026) compared two lavender essential oils: one from laboratory-scale hydrodistillation (HD) of dried biomass, the other from semi-industrial-scale dry steam distillation (SD) of fresh biomass. Nedeltcheva-Antonova et al. (2022) studied a different product: seven industrial lavender absolutes, from the 2008–2017 harvests, labelled LA1 to LA7.

How do the two studies name the species?

Léva and Gál (2026) write the name as “Lavandula angustifolia”, without the author of the taxon, among the seven species they analysed. Nedeltcheva-Antonova et al. (2022) write “Lavandula Angustifolia Mill.” in the title of their article on Bulgarian lavender absolute, analysed by GC/MS and GC-FID. In their description of the samples, the same authors write “L. angustifolia L.”.

Where was the lavender of Léva and Gál (2026) grown and harvested?

According to Léva and Gál (2026), the Lamiaceae and Asteraceae plants of the study were cultivated in Romania, in Transylvania, Covasna County, on the outskirts of Târgu Secuiesc, at 46°0′30″ N and 26°8′40″ E. The plantation was two years old in 2025, the year of harvest; harvesting was done at full bloom, in the “10 a.m. to 2 p.m.” time window, and the material of the seven species was harvested between June and August 2025. The material intended for hydrodistillation was shade-dried and kept until use.

How was the semi-industrial steam distillation (SD) carried out?

According to Léva and Gál (2026), the dry steam distillation was carried out in hand-operated, non-automatic semi-industrial equipment made of food-grade stainless steel, comprising a 150 L wood-fired steam generator, a 600 L tank for the plant material, a 300 L condenser and a Florentine-type separator. Depending on the species, the fully filled 600 L tank weighed around 140–170 kg. The operator adjusted the furnace draft to hold a condensate flow rate of 9.5 ± 0.5 L·h−1, monitored at the distillate. Each SD run was stopped when the volume of oil in the Florentine flask did not increase by more than 0.1 mL over 30 min of continuous observation. In Table 1 of the article, the semi-industrial steam distillation of Lavandula angustifolia lasted 2 h and gave 10.31 mL of essential oil per kg of fresh material.

How was the laboratory hydrodistillation (HD) carried out?

According to Léva and Gál (2026), hydrodistillation used a Clevenger-type apparatus: 70 ± 1 g of dried, finely ground material were immersed in 1 L of distilled water and distilled for 90 min, the time at which the amount of oil obtained was constant. The hydrodistilled oils were dried over anhydrous MgSO4, filtered and kept at 4 °C until analysis. The hydrodistillation yields of Table 1 were extrapolated to 1 kg of dried material. In Table 1, the laboratory hydrodistillation of Lavandula angustifolia lasted 1.5 h and gave 15.71 mL of essential oil per kg of dried, ground material, a yield extrapolated to 1 kg.

How were the HD and SD oils analysed?

Léva and Gál (2026) analysed the oils on a GC 2010 gas chromatograph coupled to an MS-QP2010 Plus mass spectrometer with an AOC-20i+s autosampler, fitted with a ZB-5ms Plus capillary column (30 m × 0.25 mm, 2.5 µm film, as written in the article). The carrier gas was helium 6.0 at 32.8 cm/s; the oven started at 40 °C for 1 min, rose to 280 °C at 5 °C/min and held there for 5 min; injector and detector were at 220 °C. 1 µL of oil diluted 200 times in CH2Cl2 was injected with a split ratio of 1:50, and mass spectrometry ran in electron ionisation mode at 70 eV over m/z 35–600. Constituents were identified by comparing their spectra with the NIST 14 and NIST 17 libraries, and the identification was confirmed by experimental linear retention indices determined with a C8–C33 alkane solution, then compared with published data. Each analysis retains roughly only the compounds with an area above 0.05 %, together with the identified compounds accounting for more than 95 % of the total chromatographic area; before multivariate modelling, the raw areas were normalised to relative percentages.

What did the comparison of the HD and SD lavender oils find?

The authors stress that the chemical differences between the HD and SD oils arise from several overlapping processing variables, including extraction scale, moisture content of the biomass (dried or fresh), degree of fragmentation (ground or intact) and distillation kinetics. In Table 2, 43 compounds were identified in the steam-distilled oil of Lavandula angustifolia and 53 in the hydrodistilled oil, by GC-MS and the NIST library. According to the authors, both lavender oils contain only small quantities of monoterpene hydrocarbons, except the β-ocimene isomers. The authors describe the SD oil as having a full, pleasant, sweet lavender scent, and the HD oil as having a strong, fresh grassy smell alongside the lavender scent. In the oil kept at 4 °C, this grassy note had almost disappeared after about 5 months, which, in the authors’ words, “suggests” the need to study how the composition changes over time.

How did the chemometric models separate the two processes?

In the principal component analysis of the lavender oils, component F1 carries 92.04 % of the variance and F2 6.63 %, 98.67 % together. The three steam-distilled replicates (LAS1 to LAS3) cluster at the negative end of the F1 axis (around −7) and the three hydrodistilled replicates (LAH1 to LAH3) at its positive end (around +7). Hierarchical classification splits the lavender samples into two groups at a dissimilarity threshold of about 180: the first contains only the LAS replicates, the second the LAH replicates. The PLS model of the lavender oils, with a single component, reaches R2Y cum = 0.9999 and Q2 cum = 0.9990, and accounts for 92.04 % of the predictor variance (R2X cum = 0.9204). A compound with a VIP score above 1.0 is treated as a significant contributor; geraniol, γ-elemene, n-hexyl butanoate, trans-α-bergamotene, lavandulyl acetate and lavandulol are the dominant markers, with VIP values above 1.05. The compounds with strong positive coefficients — among them oct-1-en-3-ol, octan-3-one, β-myrcene and D-limonene — are enriched or only recovered by hydrodistillation (LAH); for octan-3-one, the z-test gives a p-value well below 0.01. The compounds with strong negative coefficients are preferentially retained by steam distillation (LAS), among them α-thujene, α-pinene, camphene, sabinene and β-pinene.

How are the lavender concrete and absolutes of Nedeltcheva-Antonova et al. (2022) obtained?

According to Nedeltcheva-Antonova et al. (2022), lavender concrete is extracted from fresh, unsteamed flower mass, harvested from the beginning of flowering to the stage of mass flowering, and treated with a non-polar solvent (petroleum ether or n-hexane). Absolutes LA1 to LA6 were extracted from a Bulgarian lavender concrete derived from Lavandula angustifolia plants grown in the area of the village of Zelenikovo. The authors describe the absolute obtained from the concrete (LA1 to LA6) as a thin, clear, yellowish-green liquid with an aroma typical of lavender. Sample LA7 is the so-called “Lavera” absolute, a dark green to brown viscous liquid with a grassy lavender scent and a hint of honey, obtained from a concrete derived from exhausted lavender inflorescences.

How were the absolutes analysed?

The analysis was run on a 7820A gas chromatograph coupled to a 5977B mass detector and a flame ionisation detector, with two 60 m capillary columns of 0.25 mm internal diameter and 0.25 μm film: a non-polar DB-5ms UI and a mid-polar DB-17HT. The oven ran from 60 °C (2.5 min) to 155 °C at 2.5 °C/min, then from 155 to 280 °C at 5 °C/min, with a 10 min final hold; helium at 0.8 mL/min, split 1:125, injector at 260 °C, transfer line at 280 °C. Ionisation was by electron impact at 70 eV, with the source at 230 °C, the quadrupole at 150 °C and a scan range of 45 to 750 m/z. The GC-FID analysis was run on the same instrument with the same temperature gradient, a post-column flow splitter allowing simultaneous analysis on both detectors. Compounds were identified with the NIST 14 and Wiley 7th libraries and with linear retention indices (C8–C40 alkanes); where reference data were lacking, structures were proposed from their fragmentation pattern and/or from literature spectra. The main compounds were quantified by internal normalisation with a response factor set to 1 for all constituents; the authors state that this GC-FID percentage is not a true quantification, but allows the studied absolutes to be compared. More than 150 compounds above 0.01 % were detected in the absolutes, of which 111, from C2 to C30, were identified by GC/MS and quantified simultaneously by GC-FID.

What does Table 1 of Nedeltcheva-Antonova et al. (2022) give for each absolute?

Table 1 gives the composition of the absolutes as determined by GC/MS/FID on the DB-17HT column; in it, “n.d.” means not detected, note 2 marks co-eluting components, and note 3 a value that is that of cryptone in LA7. Each value below is a relative GC-FID percentage (“Rel. %”) in one absolute, not a composition of the species nor of lavender essential oil.

Which rows give the main monoterpene compounds?

The row “Linalool + 3-Octanol, acetate” (co-eluting components) reads 31.67; 27.33; 38.12; 37.30; 38.24; 36.12 and 20.74 (Rel. %) in absolutes LA1 to LA7. The abstract, § 3.2 and Table 2 of the article give the same values under the name “Linalool” alone. The row “Linalyl acetate + Cryptone” (co-eluting components) reads 35.81; 27.64; 27.09; 28.43 and 26.58 (Rel. %) in absolutes LA2 to LA6; the LA7 cell (0.36) is that of cryptone. The row “4-Terpineol” reads 6.50; 5.66; 3.11; 3.05; 3.12; 3.22 and 6.32 (Rel. %) in absolutes LA1 to LA7. The row “Lavandulol” reads 1.03; 1.40; 2.59; 2.57; 2.55; 2.43 and 1.36 (Rel. %) in absolutes LA1 to LA7. The row “Lavandulyl acetate” reads 1.47; 2.94; 1.80; 1.76; 1.87; 2.21 and 4.45 (Rel. %) in absolutes LA1 to LA7. The row “Camphor” reads 0.23; 0.34; 0.11; 0.11; 0.11; 0.12 and 0.30 (Rel. %) in absolutes LA1 to LA7. The row “1,8-Cineole” reads 0.68 (LA1) and 0.36; 0.35; 0.34 and 0.30 (LA3 to LA6) (Rel. %), and “n.d.” in LA7. The row “α-Terpineol” reads 0.30; 0.39; 0.57; 0.56; 0.58; 0.55 and 0.53 (Rel. %) in absolutes LA1 to LA7. The row “3-Octanone” reads 0.59; 0.43; 1.15; 1.15; 1.07 and 0.97 (Rel. %) in absolutes LA1 to LA6, and “n.d.” in LA7. The row “Geranyl acetate” reads 0.09; 0.23; 0.16; 0.16; 0.16; 0.14 and 5.73 (Rel. %) in absolutes LA1 to LA7.

Which rows give the sesquiterpenes?

The row “trans-β-Caryophyllene” reads 3.01; 3.41; 2.97; 3.05 (LA1 to LA4), 4.34 (LA6) and 3.54 (LA7) (Rel. %). The row “trans-β-Farnesene” reads 0.86; 3.26; 5.06; 5.20; 5.11; 6.42 and 1.93 (Rel. %) in absolutes LA1 to LA7. The row “Caryophyllene oxide” reads 1.23; 1.03; 1.36; 1.25; 1.59; 0.88 and 2.71 (Rel. %) in absolutes LA1 to LA7. The row “Nerolidol” is “n.d.” in absolutes LA1 to LA6 and reads 7.77 (Rel. %) in LA7.

Which rows give the coumarins?

The row “Coumarine” (spelling of the source) reads 1.25; 2.44; 1.25; 1.23; 1.22; 1.33 and 10.9 (Rel. %) in absolutes LA1 to LA7. The row “Coumarin, 7-methoxy-” reads 0.89; 1.48; 0.56; 0.57; 0.57; 0.60 and 3.83 (Rel. %) in absolutes LA1 to LA7. Section 3.5 of the text writes “7-metoxy coumarine” for the same values. The class “Coumarins” reads 2.15; 3.92; 1.81; 1.80; 1.79; 1.93 and 14.73 (Rel. %) in absolutes LA1 to LA7.

What do the class and total rows give?

The monoterpene hydrocarbons read 2.67; 2.07; 1.26; 1.43; 0.93; 1.68 and 5.15 (Rel. %), and the oxygenated monoterpenes 80.55; 75.73; 75.68; 74.07; 76.66; 72.60 and 52.83, in absolutes LA1 to LA7. The total of the quantified compounds reads 97.43; 94.28; 96.05; 94.96; 95.70; 97.31 and 95.25 (Rel. %) in absolutes LA1 to LA7.

What else did the authors find in the absolutes?

According to the authors, the absolutes studied have a similar qualitative composition and different quantitative characteristics. Triterpenes are present in trace amounts in the absolutes, and α- and β-amyrin, clionasterol and lupeol acetate were “tentatively” identified. Fatty acids, higher alcohols and waxes were also found in the absolutes.

Which ISO documents name lavender oil?

In the ISO catalogue for ICS 71.100.60, ISO 3515:2002, “Oil of lavender (Lavandula angustifolia Mill.)”, comes under ISO/TC 54 and is listed at stage 90.93. In the same copy, the corrigendum ISO 3515:2002/Cor 1:2004, “Oil of lavender (Lavandula angustifolia Mill.) — Technical Corrigendum 1”, comes under ISO/TC 54 and is listed at stage 60.60. ISO 3515:1987, “Oil of French lavender (Lavandula angustifolia P. Miller)”, is marked “Withdrawn”, at stage 95.99, under ISO/TC 54. ISO 3515:1976, “Oil of French lavender”, is marked “Withdrawn”, at stage 95.99, under ISO/TC 54.

References