Essential Oils

The leaves and flowers are aromatic and, to a lesser extend, the stems. The whole plant above ground is harvested and steam-distilled to obtain a green to greenish-olive, clear, mobile essential oil with a smooth, rose-like odour that has a minty top note.

The plants bear a few flowers at the end of green long stems with a single to a few flowers per stem. The flower stems do not grow beyond the leave dome. The flowers each has five umbel-like petals which are pink to light purple with a dark central streak.

A single light-green to green leave grows at the end of a green, long, round, hairy stem, which has a distinct groove along its top edge. A leave has a well-defined vein structure, forms five, deeply parted lobes, each division again clefted and coarse serrated.

Rose geranium is a perennial shrub that may grow up to one meter high from a single, short stem that branches into several minor branching stem to form a bush. Young stems are green, and tender; older stems become light brown and semi-woody to woody. Stems, flower-and leave stems, and leaves are pubescent, but the leaves, generally, bears less hears on their top surfaces than their bottom surfaces.

GERANIUM (Pelargonium graveolens)