182 SCIENTIFIC AND APPLIED PHARMACOGNOSY 



LIGNUM SANTALI. Santalum Album or Sandal Wood. 



The wood of Santalum album (Fam. Santalacese), a parasitic tree 

 indigenous to India. It attains a height of 10 M. and produces a 

 dense evergreen foliage. It is extensively cultivated in southeastern 

 Asia and the Sandal Wood Islands of the Indian Archipelago. The 

 trees, when twenty to forty years of age, are cut down, the bark 

 removed and the wood cut into billets. It is then sorted and sent 

 through Bombay to China, Europe and the United States. There 

 are some eighteen different commercial varieties which are recognized. 

 The most select wood being used in India for the distillation of the 

 oil, the wood of the stems and twigs only being exported. 



Description. In billets or logs from 10 to 35 cm. in length and 

 5 to 12 cm. in diameter (Fig. 76); outer surface light yellowish- 

 brown, smooth, and marked by more or less flattened areas due to 

 the barking process; inner surface distinctly radiate and with 

 numerous concentric rings; hard and heavy; odor agreeably aro- 

 matic and markedly persistent; taste strongly aromatic. 



The tracheae are large, having bordered pores and contain in 

 the lumina yellowish-brown or reddish-brown globular or more or 

 less irregular amorphous masses. The wood fibers are strongly 

 lignified and possess thick porous walls and contain in the lumina 

 spheroidal starch grains from 0.006 to 0.015 mm. in diameter. The 

 medullary rays are in short longitudinal rows and from 1 to 2 cells 

 wide, the walls being very thick and porous. 



Constituents. A volatile oil, the amount depending upon the 

 altitude at which the trees grow, those growing at a higher altitude 

 yielding ten times as much oil as those growing in the lower situa- 

 tions. The oil obtained from the heartwood is superior to that 

 obtained from the sap wood and that obtained from trees which 

 have been slow in developing is best of all. The methods of dis- 

 tillation in India are rather crude and they do not secure the yield 

 that is obtained by distillers in Europe and United States. The 

 yield of oil from the imported Indian wood is from 3 to 5 per cent. 



Oil of Sandalwood is a rather viscid, nearly colorless or light- 

 yellowish liquid of a peculiar, but persistent odor. It contains 

 from 80 to 98 per cent of santalol; 6 per cent of a sesquiterpene 

 (santalen) ; 3 per cent of an aldehyde (santalal) ; a ketone (santalon) ; 

 santalic acid, teresantalic acid, formic acid and acetic acid in the 

 form of esters amounting to 3 per cent; and about 0.3 per cent of a 

 strongly odorous constituent. 



Allied Plants. West Indian Sandalwood oil is obtained from 

 Amyris balsamifera (Fam. Rutaceae). West Australian Sandalwood 



