Ok, so I did a test for you cold weather people.

I went and found the plant, must have been the 14th. I asked nice and the person let me break off one of the crappy looking bits from the bottom. No cutting tool was used. I snapped/ripped it off between the nodes to get a section of 6 nodes and a growth tip. I ripped off the bottom two leaves and pushed it through the top of a water bottle so the break and 2 nodes were below the water line. I left it in the water for a day. I cut an old something jug(~2gal), punctured the bottom for drainage, put some dirt in the bottom, then filled dirt in around the plant with the two nodes under and the third just above the soil and watered. Telluride is effing cold and dry and I left it inside a south facing window but not in the sun. The next day it was almost flat to the ground so I misted it with water, misted inside a clear plastic bag with one poked hole and put it over the top propped up with a drinking straw poked in the dirt. It is cold in my house. I kept misting it and it sort of looked better but the bottom two leaves fell off. Just this morning it is fully erect, excited by life! It now only has 2 leaves and a growth tip. The leaves that are left look great. I will be poking the bag full of holes in the next couple days and acclimating it to light and dryness.

So, it looks like in the 60's it roots in about a week.

Ok, piper auritum, hoja santa, let's face the fact, at best you are going to obtain 0,2% of safrole from the plant, thats only 2 liters of oil from a freakin' ton of leaves, if you buy them in the US it's going to cost 10-15 US dollars a kilo when bought in bulk 100 kilos or more, that's 5,000 to 10,000 US dollars for a kilogram of the precursor, not having in account the energy and work needed to process such cuantity of leaves. If you plant them your self, dont know the oil one can make from one plant but I bet it'll be something like 1 or 2 mls.

Much more cheaper to make safrole or piperonal your self, from black pepper, pepper oleoresin, piperine, eugenol, vanillin, catechol or whatever you want. Anything from pepper not so cheap.

If you want to go green or make a small ammount of M with little equipment, you can steam the bark of sass as long it's available in bulk, for 1,000-3,000 US dollars a kilo of safrole, or something like 100-200 $ in safrole to make an ounce of M that runs several times more expensive, not bad. It's cheaper to buy the essential oil already made on small ammounts where it's available, half an ounce vials or something. Buying from one source a very large ammount of the bark (hundreds of pounds may be) as an individual might not be a very wise thing to do, the same but worse with small vials of the essential oil. Buying sass oil on bulk is out of question, of course. Sooner or later the selling of the bark will be clamp down, not by the DEA because it's not a viable source of safrole at least on large schale, but from the FDA that says safrole is a carcinogen and is banned for internal use.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on something.

The concentarion of sassafras oil on the root bark is from 6% to 9% if it has been recently digged, from commercial root bark, as said by a memer here, goes from 1,5% to 5%, the average being a 2,5-3,3%. Digging for roots is for the desesperate I think, rent a truck and bring down a tree then you can strip the bark from the roots but this technice isn't too low profile

You can buy tons of juniper virgininana wood oil, but juniper virginiana leaf oil seems impossible to get. Dont know about the % of essential oil of J.V. but I think it's a very low % over the total mass of leaves. Pine tree leaves are very-very easy to steam distill, check this out: http://home.mchsi.com/~tblount/steam.htm

Eremophila longifolia
Usually inland, continental Australia except extreme north

"Steam distillation of the leaves gave an aromatic oil in 5.8 % yield. Various levels of safrole content between collection groups where recorded via fractional distillation and gas chromatography at (i) 72%, (ii) 90% mean / 93% best, (iii) 37%, and (iv) 0%."

The most promising sustainable source of safrole is piper hispidinervum, or pimenta longa for the brazilians, it has up to 4% E.O. (on average 2-2,5%) with a content of saofrole up to the 98% but more likely 80-90%. The main caveats are that seed exist in Brazil but are impossible to get over the net, and that more than likely it only grows on a tropical weather, that is from 15 to 35 ºC all the year. From 1 hectare (that is a square of 100 x 100 meters, or 10,000 plants) of mature plants you cant get 2 crops of leaves each year, witch dry will yield from 200 to 250 KILOS of safrole oil witch will sell at 5 US dollars the kilo. No joke.

Hispidinervum is only a common plant on the states deep inside the jungle of Brazil, seeds are only sold to brazilian farmers... there one might go. There is A LOT of info on how to grow the plant on the net, just in portuguese, but I can understand it at 90%

I figure if you google search in their language you ought to find a forum, or a page that sells them? If not, at least someone who knows where some are located, and for a price ought to give you some.

I think that the best bet would be to talk to a farmer from a brazilian forum on agriculture or something and pay him to get the seeds and send them to you.

Did I type I was going to poke holes and slowly acclimate the plant? Yeah, I should have done that. Instead, I ripped the bag off and put it in the light. Then I forgot to watch it. Then it was very unhappy. I can tell you in hot and humid it doesn't behave like this. Anyway, it might even die on me. It has still not recovered and is quite limp.

I am on this Pimenta Longa search now!

So rot black has reached above the soil line. I chopped it off above and placed it in water. Things aren't looking good for my cutting. Should I have rooted it in water first? Or used dryer soil and a humidity tent? Cold dry gardening sucks!

As for the Brazillian farmers, their reluctance to spread the stuff around just makes me think how good it is. I'm sure they know that their sassy industry would take right of to every other central american country if they knew they could grow a weed and get good money for it. Now I have to have it!

what about 'cinnamomum camphora' aka 'camphor laurel' which contains up to 90% saffrole?

5. SAFROLE and CAMPHOR OILS; BASE MANUFACTURING COMPOUNDS

Active Constituents of Camphor Laurel including compounds unique to southern hemisphere laurels
Narcotic Compounds 1. BENZENE (Ref: ATORI@scu-Lismore,1998)
2. NAPHTHALENE (A Fish poison) 
Cytotoxin 3. CINNAMOMIN (Ref: Liu-Jing et al.2001)
Toxic alkaloid 4. CINAMOLAURINE Ref: Toxic Plants of Nth America, 2001 
Volatile compounds 5. SABINENE
6. THUJENENE (Ref: NSW Ag. Labs)
Sesquiterpenes 7.CALACORENE
8. CALAMENONE
9. GUIAENE
10. MYRCENE
11.PATCHOULEN 12. alpha-YLANGENE
13. beta-YLANGENE
Other compounds 14. BICYCLOGERMACRENE ; (Ref:Kew Bot. Gdns.)
15-17. GERMACRENE A, B, AND D;
18. Hydrocyanic Acid (Breyer-Brandwijk/Africa 1968).

 

LIST TWO: Active Chemical Constituents Contained in Both NORTHERN and SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE CAMPHOR Laurel TREES, and Tree Parts Laboratory-Analysed TO-DATE:-

19. CAMPHOR ( principal, most common toxin, also a Narcotic compound)
20. BORNEOL (not present in all chemotypes)
21. SAFROLE, a moderately powerful mammalian liver pro-carcinogen
22. TERPINEOL
23. HELIOTROPIN
24. VANILLIN (also a Narcotic compound, after Overton, 1898,1901 'Studies on Narcosis')
25-26. alpha-, & beta-PINENE
27. CAMPHENE
28-29. alpha-, & beta-TERPINENE
30. LIMONENE
31. EUCALYPTOL (= 1,8 - Cineole)
32. TERPINEN-4-ol
33. TERPINEOL
34. CADINENE
35. gamma-TERPINENE
36. alpha-HUMULENE
37. CAMPHENOL
38. THUJENE
39. PHELLANDRENE
40. CAMPHORENE (A fourth cytotoxic constituent)
41-42. RETICULENE & LAUROLITSENE (toxic ALKALOIDS)
43-44. KUSUNOKIOL & SECOISOLARICIRESINOL DIMETHYL ETHER
45. 1,6 DIMETHYL-4-ISOPROPYL-7.8 DIHYDRONAPHTHALENE
(Ref:Bull.Chem.Soc.Japan, 41: 234 ; Other Refs. Kew Royal Botanic Gdns.Kew.UK, 'ATORI- Southem Cross Univ., NSW Agriculture-Wollongbar; & Indian Journal Medicinal Plants.1968.)
Typical Active Constituents Of Camphor (old list)
Potter's New Cyclopaedia of Botanical Drugs and Preparations (Wren 1988) provides a list of the volatile oils in camphor of natural origin :
1. camphor
2. safrole*
3. borneol
4. heliotropin
5. terpineol
6. vanillin and two of the lignans:
7. secoisosolariciresinol dimethyl ether
8. kusunokiol.


Other actives showing-up in an elementary GLC-screening analysis of both Chinese (double-distilled), and Australian camphor oils (Friend 1998) are:

9. limonene
10. thujenene
11. alpha pinene
12. beta pinene
13. camphene
14. sabinene
15. alpha terpinene
16. beta terpinene
17. limonene (a solvent)
18. 1,8-cineole
19. terpinen-4-ol
20. terpineol
21. "assorted sesquiterpenes"


('ATTORI', Southern Cross University, GLC analyses, March l998)
According to organic chemists the majority of the above 20 or more active constituents are moderately to highly biologically active against a range of organisms in the environment, some being known and proven capable of killing certain species/genera or a range of biota. Additionally, as first reported in 1968 in the Indian Journal of Medicinal Plants, camphor roots discharge considerable volumes of the alkaloid
22. laurolitsene*
23. reticulene*
24,25 Two new cytotoxins found by Chinese researchers (1995)
26. hydrocyanic acid

* Highly suspect wildlife toxins. Summary: Most active constituents of Camphor laurel trees are mono- or diterpenes, but lignans and alkaloids (2) have been reported, but are non-monitorable to date. The most-suspect toxins are the mammalian carcinogen Safrole,and the 2 alkaloids; Safrole % predominates as greater than Camphor % in certain chemotypes.

It really isn't so hard to find this thing in the states. It is already there. Go to the Mexicans! They have it. Hoja Santa, say it with me "ohh-ha santa". Also just try big nurserys "root beer plant" or piper auritum, or my favorite, the nursery run by the crazy lady that has ever psychedelic plant you have ever thought of. The places that have jimson weed and morning glorys growing out front... heh.

Stirbar you are the shit! I went up to a nice mexican lady at my local nursery and said, " Senoria tiene hoja santa?" She said, "Ci" and I said donde?" She motioned for me to follow and we went a way and I saw it before we were there. It was 7.00 dollars for a gallon size plant. And it smells like black licorice. In my opinion it has to much water in it to contain as much sass as root bark but the experience for someone that has never seen or smelt the stuff is priceless.

It takes a very VERY small amount to generate the smell your talking about. "Labware" left out almost a year to the elements still has the strong smell of safrole on it so one can imagine how very little it takes to produce this smell.

My general take on it is if someone can source and distill a large amount of some plant possibly requiring Multi 10's of Kg of plant material then they can get sassafrass RB and do the same yeilding ALOT more product per process. Sassafrass rootbark has some of the highest oil content of any plant around and I think many underestimate the amount of material needed to get anything out of these other plants after seperation of hydrosol. We are talking 55 gallon drums and more just for small quantaties of oil where as you would be on the order of gallons if doing the same with Sassafrass rootbark.

I think people need to do more research into hairy root cultures and start producing safrole by the barrel in setups simular to fermentation equipment. It would biosynthesis safrole from Eugenol feed WTF more can you ask for.