Chemical Composition of Essential Oils from the Stems of Taxus chinensis var. mairei.

Taxus chinensis var. mairei (Taxaceae) was collected from four distant populations of China. Stem parts were subjected to supercritical CO2 (SFE-CO2) extraction in an extraction apparatus and 0.03-0.10 % essential oil was found. Sixty-two constituent from the volatile part was identified with GC/MS analysis. The study revealed that among sixty-two identified components in the essential oil of T. chinensis in four places in which eighteen constituents contained 83.60 %, 93.13 %, 77.44 % and 62.09 % were common, such as ethylbenzene, 1,3-dimethyl-benzene, p-xylene, benzaldehyde, benzyl alcohol, acetophenone, 2,6,11-trimethyl-dodecane, butylated hydroxytoluene, etc. A certain regional rule can exist among volatile oil components of the plant distributed in four places. Thirteen compounds comprised 12.49 % of total contents existed only in the essential oil from Shucheng county and thirteen compounds comprised 6.44 % and 26.90 % of total contents existed only in the essential oil from Huangshan city and Xuancheng city respectively. Such variations can bring about different pharmaceutical activities and give better assessment of crop improvement program of species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]