The Essential Oil Content and Composition of Selected Salvia Species, Sage Teas, and Sage Drops.docVIP

The Essential Oil Content and Composition of Selected Salvia Species, Sage Teas, and Sage Drops 　　Abstract: Sage is popular for its manifold applications and has always been used in herbalism. The Salvia genus encompasses up to 900 species, but only a few of them have been investigated. Hence, the objective was to investigate the essential oil content as well as the terpene composition of a number of Saliva species. In this context, S. officinalis var. Extrakta, S. officinalis “Aurea” and S. patens were investigated for the first time. To some extent, it was also possible to associate the terpene distribution of the investigated commercial sage teas and drops with the processed sage oil. Furthermore, an ultrasonic extraction with ethyl acetate seems to be an efficient quick-method for extracting the essential oil. 　　Key words: Essential oil, Salvia officinalis, sage tea, sage drops, thujone. 　　1. Introduction 　　Saliva officinalis (common sage) is a versatile plant. In cooking, it is used especially as an aromatic herbal seasoning. However, above all, it is part of herbalism. Due to its antioxidant, antibacterial, antifungal, and anti-inflammatory properties sage extracts or tinctures are applied orally or dermally [1-4]. For instance, besides its main use as a tea, sage is also processed into drops for alleviating oropharyngeal inflammations. Here, the polyphenols, but also the terpenes, contained in the essential oil are responsible for the characteristic flavour as well as the antibacterial effect of the herb. 　　Due to its robustness especially garden sage (Salvia officinalis) is cultivated in Central Europe. Additionally, the essential oils of Spanish sage (Salvia lavandulifolia) and clary sage (Salvia sclarea) are used in the pharmaceutical as well as the perfume industry [5, 6]. Overall, there are about 900 species of sage (Lamiaceae) known [7], although they have hardly been investigated. Therefore, one objective was to examine the essential oil of 15 dif