Chemical composition of the essential oils from Turkish and Honduras Styrax

Abstract

Abstract The essential oil composition of two different styrax gums, Asian and American were analysed by GC and GC‐MS. Fifty‐eight components representing more than 99.4% of the oil from Asian styrax gum and 57 components representing more than 99% of the oil from American styrax gum were identified. The major components were styrene (70.4 and 30.9% respectively), α ‐pinene (19.4 and 19.6%) and β ‐caryophyllene (0.2 and 20.2%) for the two oils. These results show that we could identify an Asian from an American styrax by relative amounts of styrene and β ‐caryophyllene in the essential oils. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.