Abstract
Pinus cembra L. is a coniferous European mountain range tree rich in oleoresins and essential oils. Twig tips with needles are the most common tree parts used to obtain essential oils. As the whole tree contains volatiles, the essential oil composition from different parts was studied, including twig tips with needles from the bottom, the top and the cone bearing branches, cones, twigs without needles from the lower and upper part of the crown as well as wood and bark from the trunk. The variability in essential oil composition between these plant parts and between individual trees has been studied using multivariate statistical analyses. α-Pinene was present in all samples, being highest in cones (49.3%) and lowest in sapwood (0.7%). Twig tips with needles from different parts of the crown had similar essential oil composition with α-pinene (43.9–48.3%), β-phellandrene (13.1–17.2%), β-pinene (6.6–9.3%), germacrene D (5.1–6.8%) and limonene (4.1–6.1%) as main compounds. Twig essential oils had usually more β-phellandrene (23.9–29.8%) than α-pinene (23.3–24.3%) and also appreciable amounts of β-pinene (13.5–15.1%) and limonene (11.9–17.9%). Cone essential oils contained mainly α-pinene, β-pinene (20.1%) and limonene (13.9%). The essential oils from wood and bark were rich in diterpenes as cembratrienol (4.9–21.4%), cembrene (4.8–14.3%) and methyl daniellate (2.7–6.8%). Sapwood distillates contained also notable amounts of alkane derivatives. Finally, the solvent free SPME technique has been employed to analyse the volatiles in the plant parts. For needles and cones the observed patterns were in good accordance with the compositions of the respective essential oils.
Highlights
Pinus cembra L. (Pinaceae), known as swiss stone pine, cembran pine, ceder pine, or arrola pine (Apetrei et al 2011), naturally occurs in two disjunct regions: in the European Alpine chain (Austria, Switzerland, Italy, France) from 1500 to 2500 m a.s.l., and the Carpathian Mountains (Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania) from 1300 to 1700 m a.s.l. (Wieser et al 2006; Wojnicka-Połtorak et al 2015)
Twig tips with needles, which are commonly used for commercial essential oil production, were collected from the upper (NT) and lower part (NB) of the trees as well as from cone bearing twigs (NC)
High oil content was reported in needles (1.96% v/w) and twigs (2.45% v/w) from trees in Romania (Apetrei et al 2013), while needles from trees grown near Trento in Italy gave 0.61% v/w essential oil (Domrachev et al 2012)
Summary
Pinus cembra L. (Pinaceae), known as swiss stone pine, cembran pine, ceder pine, or arrola pine (Apetrei et al 2011), naturally occurs in two disjunct regions: in the European Alpine chain (Austria, Switzerland, Italy, France) from 1500 to 2500 m a.s.l., and the Carpathian Mountains (Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania) from 1300 to 1700 m a.s.l. (Wieser et al 2006; Wojnicka-Połtorak et al 2015). P. cembra trees are well adapted to subalpine climate conditions (Boden et al 2009; Caudullo and de Rigo 2016; Zong et al 2010) and are highly resistant to abiotic stress factors at high altitudes (Apetrei et al 2013). They are frost-hardy and can persist winter temperatures down to - 43 °C (Caudullo and de Rigo 2016; Schutt 2014). P. cembra is supposed to be reaching the age of 1000 years (Schutt 2014; Schweingriber and Wirth 2009)
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