SWEET LAVENDER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 144, 20 June 1934, Page 5

SWEET LAVENDER.

PERFUME INDUSTRY. TASMANIAN DEVELOPMENT. RARE WHITE PLANT. No romantic novel is complete without mention of Old English lavender. If the heroine does not dry her eyes with a lavender-scented handkerchief when the hero rides away to the wars, then at least the wounded fugitive must be put to sleep between lavender-scented sheets when he staggers back to the old manor. Lavender itself has its own romantic history, of which the latest chapter is the founding of the Bride*towe lavender plantation, the first of its kind in the British Empire,'at Lilydale, Tasmania, by Mr. C. K.- Denny, who has been visiting Auckland. An idealist as well as a business man, Mr. Denny says that he will die content if he can give this new industry to the Empire, after centuries of French monopoly, and to this end lie has made an intensive study of the history and cultivation of the plant from which the popular scent is obtained. The English lavender of the novelist is useless, he i states, for the manufacture of scent. It j was taken to England from France by the Huguenots who fled thither after! the revocation, of the Edict of Nantes I in ICB9. Possibly because it was winter | when the edict was repealed and the plants were showing no flowers, the Huguenots took the wrong species. Search for Seed. In France the lavender industry has been for centuries a highly profitable source of income, but the difficulty has always been to prevent the best scentproducing species, which is an alpine , plant, from crossing with less valuable j species at the levels where they meet, the hybrid flowers, if distilled, spoiling | the whole product by the admixture of i inferior oil. Scientific cultivation, by which the crop of flowers can be increased threefold, and each flower made to yield more and higher-quality oil, has not, however, been carried very far

by the French, except in small experimental plantations, as the best land is required'for the growing of ccrcals and other necessary plants. Formerly engaged in the scent industry in -London, Mr. Denny went to Tasmania for health reasons 12 years ago, and, being a keen horticulturist, decided to experiment with lavender, more as a hobby than with any hope of profit, as similar experiments elsewhere had invariably failed. He employed two expert seedsmen to search France for pure seed of the best scent-producing variety of lavender, and it took him three months | to obtain a small packet. Good Oil Yield. These seeds he planted in a small cleared section of an area of workedout timber country at Lilydale, about 20 miles from Launceston, and from the seedlings propagated by cuttings to prevent any crossing with inferior species, Mr. Denny has built up his present plantation, in which the total length of the rows of plants is 75 miles.' After the first three years he picked 401b of flowers, the oil of which he sent to London for analysis. Oil of lavender is reqifired to contain from ,25 to 40 per cent of the principal odour ingredient, the latter fetching top price on the market, so that Mr. Denny was delighted when the analyst's report showed that his first sample contained 44.1 per. cent.

Assured of success, Mr. Denny continued his experiments, though it was six years before he had any oil to sell. During this time he tried various methods of cultivation and treatment of the crop, and produced oil that contained up to 47 per cent of the principal odour ingredient. He also experimented with mechanical harvesters, though w-ithout success, but a locally-invented machine for removing the flowers from their stalks proved highly satisfactory. One White Plant. Among Mr. Denny's first seedlingß was one plant that produced pure white flowers. This is a great rarity, only 201b of flowers having been produced in France in the whole history of lavender growing. From this plant Mr. Denny has propagated 38 plants of white lavender, the oil of which is of much higher quality, and therefore more valuable, than that of the purple lavender.

To obtain the oil, the flowers arc harvested by girls using reaping hooks. They are then placed on a grating in

the retort, 3201b at a time, with boiling water under tlieni. Rising through the layer of flowers, the steam extracts the oil, which is very volatile, and the mixed vapours of steam and oil travel through a pipe to the condenser. This has to bo very carefully kept at the right temperature, as, if the oil is not properly cooled at this stage, it will later decompose. As the condensed oil and water drip from the condenser, they are caught in glass receivers, the oil, floating on the surface of the water, being easily separated by mechanical process. From one ton of flowers 181b of oil are obtained, and this is either made mixed with spirit, for use as scent, or combined into soap made at the plantation.