The home of SwiftCraftyMonkey Formulating Inc.! Join Susan as she obsesses about cosmetic chemistry and other things (some possibly related to monkeys). Often strange, occasionally useful, and always worth a stop as a point of interest on your journey through the Intertron.
What exactly is cedrol? It’s a sesquiterpenoid alcohol found in cedarwood oil (definition here). It makes up about 19% of cedarwood Texas and 15.8% of cedarwood Virginia. The International Organization for Standardization states cedrol should make up a minimum of 20% in Texas cedarwood and a maximum of 14% in Virginia cedarwood, whereas the Fragrance Manufacturer’s...
I wrote about the “unauthorized access” (aka hacking) of our XBOX account a few weeks ago – here’s the update. After another phone call to XBOX, I found out that it can take up to FOUR TO SIX MONTHS to restore our account (meaning four to six months to return our points to us, to...
The cedarwood essential oils from Texas and Virginia can be very similar, but there are different claims and different processing for each of the oils. From Leung’s Encyclopedia of Common Natural Ingredients (click here for the excerpt): Cedarwood oil Virginia contains mainly α-and β-cedrene (ca. 80%), cedrol (3–14%), and cedrenol. Other sesquiterpenes present include thujopsene,...
Caryophyllene is a bicyclic sesquiterprene found in clove (3.56%), rosemary (up to 8.3%), oregano (4.9%), black pepper (7.29%), and possibly cedarwood atlas. (1) ß-carophyllene is the major sesquiterpene found in pepper essential oil (2). It may have some anaesthetic effect, as found in this study. “In this work we studied the local anaesthetic activity of β-caryophyllene, one of...
What’s in a name? When it comes to cedarwood essential oil, just about everything! You might be getting cedarwood atlas (Cedrus atlantica), cedarwood Texas (Juniperus ashei), cedarwood Virginia (Juniperus virginiana), or cedarwood Chinese (Juniperus chinesis or Cupressus funebris, but I’m not going to be talking about this plant beyond this point!). Cedarwood atlas is from the...