Lavender · Note 03
How it
was judged
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Colour
Pale yellow. Water-clear usually means the oil has been cut with something; anything darker or browner has been overheated, held too long, or run from flower that was already past.
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Clarity
Transparent, with nothing in suspension and no cloudy layer at the base. Cloudiness at the bottom of a bottle means water carried through, and water in oil is where spoilage starts.
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The smell of it opened
Full and immediate rather than sharp. A harsh camphor edge on first opening points to a different species or a mixed lot — the coarser lavandins smell louder and cost far less.
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The number on the certificate
Linalyl acetate, at three percent or above. This is the one check that cannot be done by looking, and it is the one the protected designation is actually built on. A bottle that passes the first three and fails this one is still just oil.
What the number stands in for
Linalyl acetate is not a quality in itself — it is a consequence. It goes down when the flower is cut late, when it sits too long before distilling, when the still runs too hot or too long. Every corner cut earlier in the process shows up as a smaller figure here.
Which is why a single number can do the work that four separate checks do for a root or a seed. With lavender, the whole history of a batch ends up compressed into one measurement.
This page describes a plant and its place in Chinese herbal tradition. It is not a description of what our products do, and nothing here is medical advice.
