Am.  Jour.  Pharm. ) 
Mar.,  1881.  j 
Ylang-Ylang  Oil. 
123 
NOTES  ON  CANANGA  OIL,  OE  YLANG-YLANG  OIL. 
By  Professor  F.  A.  Fluckiger. 
Translated  from  "Arch,  der  Phar.,"  Jan.,  1881,  Band  xv,  pp,  24  to  31,  by  Fred.  B.  Power. 
This  oil,  on  account  of  its  pleasant  odor,  which  by  most  observers 
is  designated  as  very  exquisite,  has  acquired  some  repntation,  so  that 
the  following  notes  upon  the  same,  and  the  plant  from  which  it  is 
derived,  may  be  of  general  interest. 
The  tree  whose  flowers  furnish  the  oil  known  under  the  name  of 
Ylang-Ylang,  or  Alanguilan,  is  Cananga  odoi^atay  Hooker  fil.  and 
Thomson,  from  the  family  of  Anonacese,  for  which  reason  it  is  also 
termed  in  many  price  lists  Oleum  Anonse,  or  Oleum  Unon^e.  It  is 
not  known  to  the  author  whether  the  tree  can  be  identified  in  the  old 
Indian  and  Chinese  literature ;  in  the  Occident  it  was  first  named 
"Arbor  Saguisan,'^  by  Ray,  and  was  so  called  at  that  time  in  Lucon. 
Rumph  gave  a  detailed  description  of  the  Bonga  Cananga  (Tsjampa 
of  the  Javanese),  as  the  Malayan  designation  of  the  tree  is  expressed. 
Rumph^s  illustration,  however,  is  faulty.  Lamarck  has  made  further 
short  reports  thereon  under  Canang  odorant  and  Uvaria  odorata. 
According  to  Roxburgh,  the  plant  was  brought  in  1797  from  Sumatra 
to  the  botanical  garden  of  Calcutta.  Dunal  gave  of  Uvaria  odorata, 
or  properly  Unona  odorata,  as  corrected  by  himself,  a  somewhat  more 
detailed  description  in  his  "  Monographic  de  la  famille  des  Anonacees," 
which  is  chiefly  a  repetition  of  the  statements  of  Rumph. 
We  are  finally  indebted  for  a  very  fine  illustration  of  the  Cananga 
odorata  to  the  magnificent  Flora  Javse  of  Blume ;  a  copy  of  this, 
which  in  the  original  is  handsomely  colored,  is  reproduced  with  this 
notice.  That  the  illustration  is  correct  may  be  accepted  from  the  fact 
of  the  author's  having  seen  numerous  specimens  of  the  cananga  by 
De  Candolle  in  Geneva,  also  in  the  herbarium  of  Delessert.  The 
unjustifiable  appellation  Unona  odoratissima,  which  has  passed  inaccu- 
rately enough  into  many  writings,  originated  with  Blanco,  who,  by  his 
description  of  the  intense  perfume  of  the  flowers,  which  in  a  closed 
sleeping  apartment  produces  headache,  permitted  himself  to  be  drawn 
to  the  employment  of  the  superlative  odoratissima.  Baillon  designates 
as  Canangium  the  section  of  the  genus  Uvaria,  from  which  he  contends 
the  Ylang-Ylang  tree  should  not  be  separated.  The  notice  of  Maxi- 
mowicz,  "  Ueber  den  Ursprung  des  Parfiims  Ylang-Ylang,"  contains 
only  a  confirmation  of  the  derivation  of  the  same  from  Cananga. 
