Online Encyclopedia

Make a correction

Your email address will not appear on the site. Note, comments may take some time to be approved.

Back to article: OIL OF BERGAMOT

Your email: Article name: Article content:

BERGAMOT, OIL OF, an essential oil obfained from the rind of the fruit of the Citrus berganzia. The bergamot is a smalltree with leaves and flowers like the bitter orange, and a round fruit nearly 3 in. in diameter, having a thin lemon-yellow smooth rind. The tree is cultivated in southern Calabria, whence the entire supply of bergamot oil is drawn. Machinery is mostly used to express the oil from the fruit, which is gathered in November and December. The oil, which on standing deposits a stearoptene, bergamot camphor or bergaptene, is a limpid greenish-yellow fluid of a specific gravity of o•882 to o.886, and its powerful but pleasant odour is mainly due to the presence of linalyl acetate, or bergamiol, which can be artificially prepared by heating linalol with acetic anhydride. The chief use of bergamot oil is in perfumery. The word apparently is derived from the Italian town Bergamo. The name Bergamot, for a variety of pear, is an entirely different word, supposed to be a corruption of the Turkish beg-armudi ( = prince's pear; cf. Ger. Fiirstenbirn).