Ylang Ylang (Complete) Essential Oil

Product Details Ylang Ylang Essential Oil  (Complete): Uses, Benefits, and Blends Scientific Name: Cananga Odorata Origin: Madagascar Plant Part: Flowers Scent: Sweet and Heady Color: Very slightly yellow Consistency: Medium-thin Perfumery Note:  Middle Initial Aroma Strength: Strongly sweet Extraction Method:  Fractional distillation Suitable Blending Oils: Flowers, fruits, spices, resins, and woods. Ylang-ylang is gorgeous with rosy floral fragrances like Rose and Geranium, and although it's a grass, Palmarosa. Lemony fragrances work beautifully with Ylang-Ylang Essential Oil, so Lemongrass, Melissa, and all those delicious, fresh smells. Herbs like Lavender and Chamomile are gorgeous. Patchouli is stunning.  My favorites, though, are woods like Cedarwood and Sandalwood and resins like deep Myrrh and rich Galbanum. What is Ylang Ylang (Complete)? We’ll get to the specifics of what ylang-ylang essential oil is and what it can do in a moment. The name “Ylang ylang complete” refers to a version of how the oil has been produced. Ylang-ylang essential oil is produced via a process called fractional distillation. This means the steam distillation is stopped several times throughout the process, and fractions of the oil are taken off. Distillation moves oily molecules out of the plant via evaporation. But these so-called “volatiles” move at different rates, with the smallest ones leaving first and those with larger and heavier structures taking longer to get lifted out. So, the chemistry of the oil produced after one hour is different from that of three hours later. As such, these different chemical formulae will also smell and act differently. So the producer makes and sells several fractions, but then also takes a little of each and blends them back together to form “a complete.” Ylang Ylang Extra vs Ylang Ylang Complete Just as an overview. The first distillation is not very nice, so all that is achieved in the first hour is discarded. The fraction that is created in the next hour is called the “Extra”. This is the finest, and it is a collection of mainly alcohols and esters. The extra is hugely expensive and mostly sold to household-name perfumery houses. Then we have Ylang Ylang I. This is stopped somewhere between one to three hours, and it is determined entirely by the skill and judgment of the distiller. All the way through, they are watching the consistency of the oil. When to stop is determined by the specific gravity of the oil, which is the weight of the oil when compared to water. Each distiller has their own opinion of when that should be, and so they have huge amounts of control over the beauty of the oil. This extraction, Ylang Ylang 1, is thought to be the best from an aromatherapy point of view, for many reasons, but mainly because it is when the levels of linalool are the highest. Linalool is proven to be excellent as an anti-anxiety, antidepressant, and anti-inflammatory agent. Likewise, beta-caryophyllene often flourishes in this