It's nice to have a whole article devoted to lavender. Three of the author's statements surprised me, and I would like to hear more details and see how solid these statements really are:
1. "
English, French and Spanish are its botanical trio of roots and it is the last which is the one most relied on for essential oils." - What actually is meant by that
botanical trio of roots?
One would expect to find wild lavender in Spain, because it is a Mediteranian plant after all. But I was not aware that Spanish lavender oils would have a particular fame and be widely used outside its homeland. By the way: it also wasn't the Romans who brought lavender to Spain and France!
The recommendable Wikipedia article on
Lavender says that Spanish lavender is used in landscaping. Thankfully, that article also includes a few warnings concerning lavender applications. Where actually is lavender cultivated in Spain?
2. "
England has a plethora of lavender farms and companies..." - Where are farms of any nominable size located ? And while in the UK: how about Scotland?
3.
"According to Luca Turin, in his book, Perfumes The Guide" the best lavender is from the monks of Caldey Island, South Wales."I guess the author means the perfume, not the lavender fields or any oil, because only oils from southern France are used to make the Caldey Lavender: “Excellent grades of steam-distilled lavender oil come from all over the world, but adding just the right amount of other stuff to turn lavender into a real perfume is tricky… Caldey Island Lavender has an exquisite quiet, musky drydown. It was composed by Flemish freelance perfumer Hugo Collumbien, now 89 years old. I called him up to ask how he did it, and he explained he used the best stuff from Sault, in the Vaucluse.“ (Luca Turin in NZZ Folio of September 2006).
