PHILIPPINE RESINS, GUMS, SEED OILS, AND 
ESSENTIAL OILS 
By Aucustus P. WEST AND WILLIAM H. BROWN 
INTRODUCTION 
The Philippine forests contain a large number of trees and 
other plants which produce seed oils, essential oils, resins, and 
gums. A number of such forest products are used locally, while 
a few enter into the foreign commerce of the Islands. The 
present bulletin aims to present a somewhat popular account of 
these various products. 
A short account of agricultural, oil-yielding plants has been 
included for the sake of completeness. This has seemed the 
more advisable as there are only a few of them. The most 
important oil-producing plants, which can be regarded as strictly 
agricultural and never wild, are the coconut palm and peanut. 
There are in the Philippines a number of cultivated medicinal 
plants which contain oils. They are, however, for the most part 
unimportant, and oil is not extracted from them in the Arch- 
ipelago. 
Some of the resinous products and seed oils from Philippine 
forests are used extensively in the preparation of paints and 
varnishes, while others are employed for medicinal purposes, 
illumination, the manufacture of soaps, etc. A number of the 
resins, which occur most abundantly, are of comparatively little 
value at the present time, but some of these would seem to have 
promising possibilities. 
A few of the Philippine essential oils (the odoriferous, volatile 
oils obtained from vegetable sources) are used commercially in 
the preparation of perfumes; anid others would be valuable com- 
mercially, if this industry were properly developed. Acacia far- 
nesiana (aroma) is a very common species in grasslands and 
open places in the Philippines. In France this shrub is grown 
extensively for the perfume obtained from its flowers, known 
as cassie flowers. There is no record of such a utilization in 
the Philippines. 
The chief difficulty encountered in the collection of products 
from Philippine forest trees is that the forests usually contain a 
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