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When we refer to botanical material in the manufacture of essential oils, we look at a variety of matter from vegetation that is used to extract these precious oils.
Various parts of the plants, herbs, shrubs, grasses and trees are used and include:
- Leaves
- Roots
- Stems
- Buds
- Twigs
- Rhizomes
- Heartwood
- Bark
- Resin
- Flowers
- Seeds
- Fruits
- or the entire plant in some cases like peppermint.
Extraction 
Depending on what type of plant is used, or which part, the most appropriate extraction method is used and can be done by expression, distillation or solvent extraction.
Large amounts of botanical material is used to extract the oils, since some plants have very low yields of oil contained in their specialized oil cells.
It for instance takes 60,000 rose petals to produce 1 ounce of pure rose oil, and about 8,000,000 hand picked jasmine blossoms to produce only 1 kilo of pure jasmine oil.
Some material, like sandalwood, must be properly aged before it can be used in the manufactured of essential oils.
The sandalwood tree must first reach the age of 36 years, and be thirty feet high, before it can be cut down and distilled.
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