Essence and Flower

Carefully examine the crucible, and make sure that there are no cracks, even as thin as a hair. The Medicine would otherwise entirely volatilize and lose its Essence and Flower, and the ingestion of the mere residue would be of no benefit. You can use the crucible after you have smeared it and left it to dry for ten days. 

Take ten pounds of Yellow Flower of Lead (qian huanghua), put it in a vessel, and heat it over a fire of charcoal. Pour seven pounds of quicksilver onto the lead, make an intense fire, and in one instant their Essence and Flower will arise together. 

Their appearance will be similar to gold. They will also resemble shooting stars, the purple and scarlet Liquid Pearl liuzhu), and the five-colored Mysterious and Yellow. Gather and collect the Essence and Flower with an iron spoon. You will obtain ten pounds, which you should transmute in nine cycles [with the Divine Tally]. 

Metabolically altered fatty acids (i.e., fatty acids that have been reduced in chain length by ot- and/or p-oxidation and have undergone various processes of oxidation or reduction) occur in many essential oils. Many of these intermediary metabolites are converted ultimately to esters, acids, alcohols, aldehydes, alkenes, and alkanes (Fig. 2.22). These fatty acid derivatives are relatively volatile and occur widely as components of the essences of flowers, fruits, stems, leaves. 

Their higher homologues and their derivatives such as naphtenes, cyclenes, and terpenes, which occur naturally in certain crude oils, essences of flowers and in the roots of many plants and trees, also have no action on aluminium. The most common ones are menthadiene, pinene, terebenthine, which makes up the bulk of turpentine, and camphor. Aluminium equipment is widely used for the extraction, purification and storage of these products. 

Primary alcohols are the most common ones, and the most frequently used. They occur naturally in liquor, wine, beer, and in many natural essences of fruits and flowers. They are very important for the chemistry of fragrances and detergents. 

Hence, the acidity decreases in the course of vegetation the proportion of free linalol and the proportion of total linalol also decrease in the essence up to the time when the flowers are fully opened, whilst the proportion of ester increases then, when the flower fades, the essential oil becomes richer in linalol, whilst, on the other hand, its ester-content decreases. 

Elder flower essence can be helpful during times of transitions when courage is needed. It can help alleviate fears and helps one to feel more supported. Use when you feel overcontrolled by others as well as when overwhelmed by fear and anxiety. Elder can help one to feel more joy and enhances one s ability to recover and feel renewed. Use elder during life s challenging times as a flower essence, with faith and prayer to aid in your personal renewal. 

The aroma exists in every part of plants, hut not in all portions of the same plant. Sometimes it is obteined from the root or wood, then from, the bark, and again from the flowers, leaves, fruit, or seeds. Some few plants yield odor in all their parts. The orange gives three distinctive odors—off of neroli from tire flowers essence of Portugal from the rind of the fruit and oil otpetit-grain from the leaves and thus it appears that the oil may also differ with the port of the plant whence It is obtained. 

Bouquet of Spring Flowers.—Extraits de rose et violette, each one pint extrait d acacia and essence of rose, each two and a half ounces attar of bergamot, two drachms tincture of ambergris, one ounce. Mix, and after tan days, filter. 

Enfieurage. This is an ancient process for capturing aromafic essential oils from flowers, such as jasmine and tuberose. In this now essentially obsolete process, freshly gathered flower petals are carefully spread on a sheet, usually glass, upon which is spread a very thin film of highly purified fat. The petals remain in contact with the fat film for 24 hours, after which the peials are removed and replaced with a fresh batch. The process requires from 30 to 40 repetitions before the fat becomes saturated with the essential oil. The fat at this point is called pomade, which is extracted with pure alcohol. Prior to the availability of more advanced technology, some essence manufacturers would have as many as a thousand petal frames in operation at one time. 

The use of terpenoids, usually as mixtures prepared from plants, dates from antiquity. The several essential oils produced by distillation of plant parts contained the plant essences. These oils have been employed in die preparation of perfumes, flavorings, and medidnals. Examples are oils of clove (local anesthetic in toothache), lemon (flavoring), lavender (perfume), and juniper (diuretic). Usually essential oil production depends on a simple technology which often involves steam distillation of plant material The perfume industry of Soudiem France uses somewhat more sophisticated procedures in the isolation of natural flower oils since these oils are heat sensitive. The separation of oils from citrus fruit residues m California and Florida is done by machine. 

The alcohols occur in oil of rose and other flower essences. They have geranium or rose odors and are important perfume ingredients. The aldehydes have much stronger citruslike odors and occur as major or minor constituents in many essential oils, such as oil of citronella, oil of lemon, and so on. 

There are many applications where the organic compounds are extracted from natural materials. Extraction is used for preparation of pure flavor essences from expressed oils of various citrus fruit. Pyrethrum is recovered from pyrethrum flowers by solvent extraction. A continuous saponification, glycol extraction, and splitting process for converting fat into finished soap base has been used in soap production. 

Jasmine flowers for the production of essences are picked at night as the plants him hemu al reactions cause odorous compounds to be at their most intense after dark. It is an expensive essential oil to produce and this is reflected in the price of a good quality product. 

While CO2 is a very interesting extractant from the standpoints of 1) efficiency, and 2) toxicity (i.e., while the extract may cause problems, no toxicity is associated with the solvent or solvent residues, per se), it is also appealing to those dealing with fragile or thermally labile essences. For example many flowers possess very delicate aromas that are easily altered by conventional isolation and concentration treatments. Figures 5-7 show chromatograms of three flower extracts obtained by liquid CO2 extraction. 

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