heh Hi!
How do you choose which is the best extraction method for your starting plant material?
Do Seeds and barks (woody) OR soft material generally have prefered methods?
A nice fleshy soft green plant is ideal. isn't it?
I want to work with fennel! A plant that smells like licorish and has my name written all over it.
With fennel, even the main stem is nice and soft, it also has big soft bulbs. (as bad as that sounds)
I am going to collect and probably grow (it aint hard-it would grow on a rebound-ace tennis court
) fennel when I have time and I would like to extract all the volatile oils.
I'm unsure of what extraction method to choose, steam distilling or solvent extraction since I have solubility data?
Should it bee dried beforehand?
Here's some info from the merck (that some top-bee gave me)...
Monograph number: Title:
Fennel . Additional name(s): Large fennel ; sweet fennel Literature references: Dried, ripe fruit of cultivated varieties of Foeniculum vulgare Mill., Umbelliferae. Habit. Southern Europe, Western Asia, widely cultivated.
Contains 3-4% volatile oil.Title:
Oil of Fennel . Literature references: Volatile oil from the dried fruit of Foeniculum vulgare Mill., Umbelliferae. Also from the sweet fennel plant (var. dulce ).
Constit. 50-60% anethole, approximately 20% fenchone, pinene, limonene, dipentene, phellandrene. Properties: Colorless or pale yellow liquid; odor and taste of fennel.
d 25 25 0.953-0.973 . alpha D 25 +12degrees to +24degrees . n D 20 1.5280-1.5380 . Slight ly sol in water; sol in 1 vol 90% or in 8 vols 80% alcohol; very sol in chloroform, ether. Keep well closed, cool and protected from light. Density: d 25 25 0.953- Refraction index: n D 20 1.5280- Rotation: +12degrees to +24 USE: To cover taste of unpleasant medicines. THERAP CAT: Carminative.
It's also said to contain anise, that's what led me to it when I saw the word anise at the Hive.
But in the merck Index monograph for oil of fennel, no reference is made to this (However in the anise record, a reference is made to fennel oddly enough), so I don't think it contains much of this, I could bee wrong-this isn't important to me, because I'm interested in all the constituents of Oil of Fennel.