Google rulez!!
GOOGLE FOR PRESIDENT!
Yesterday I found a supplier of essential oils who sells PURE essential oil of the australian "Prickly Leaf Tea Tree" (melaleuca squamophloia), which has an essential oil containing mostly elemicin (followed by Linalool, alpha-Pinen, Bicyclogermacren, Paracymen in that order, at least their certificate of analysis says so, and I believe them..)
Unfortunately the price of this essential oil is quite high, something like 290 $ per 100ml....
But considering that at least approx. 50% of this oil could bee converted to something like 3,4,5-triMeO-benzaldehyde or the like, that's 300 bucks for 50 grams of a very valuable precursor, hm...
...starting from here, mesc would be still something very expensive to make!
Let's see what other valuable oils they have and what their analysis say:
ELEMI resin/oil main constituents are (in that order)
"Limonene, Elemicin, Elemol, Elemene, Phellandrene" but other sources say the elemicin fraction is only up to 10% of the oil, probably NOT enough for our needs
Nutmeg oil contains a small percentage of elemicin along with some myristicin (probably also not worth the work of separation, but somewhat cheaper than "m. squamoploia" oil):
"Pinene, Myrcene, Sabinene, alpha- & beta-Terpinene, Terpinene 1-0l-4, Myristicin, Elemicin"
...and a nepalese herb named "wintergreen" (gaultheria fragrantissima; wow, sounds like if it has a *lot* of strong fragrance
) has the following main constituents in its essential oil: Methyl-Salicylates, Benzyl-Benzoate, Menthyl-Azetate, beta-ASARONE, Hexanal
But I'm a little confused about their calamus rhizome oil analysis, 'cuz it says "Calamenene, alpha-Cadinol, Shyobunone, 6-Epishyobunone, Acorone, Acorenone, cis-Isoasarol", but no asarone at all, and that's the asian acorus calamus species, not the european variety (they contain more beta-asarone than the european species, due to having multiple chromosomes, being tetraploid (4 chr. sets) in contrast to russian/european varieties that are triploid (triple chromosomes, my botanical book says "sterile" species?!) and american calamus, being "only" diploid and containing almost no asarone at all. It seems as the number of chromosome sets is directly related to the asarone content of the essential oil (more chromosomes = more alpha/beta-asarone)!)
The essential oil asarone content may be determined by checking the refraction index: if its less than 1,500, there are less than 3% asarone present; if its more between 1,500 to 1,5545 the asarone content will be "something between 4 - 96%", not very precise, but as a first test...
..who knows better methods of estimating the asarone (or other essential oil goodies) content of herb oils? I'm all ears...
Not to forget Ho LEAF oil, not to confuse with the also available wood oil (cinnamomum camphora, a chinese herb called Ho-Sho): "Sassafrol, Linalol, SAFROLE, Borneon, Pinene" are the main constituents...
Hope this helps!
http://tlf.cx/dearpenis.swf