Birch: Back to the Basics

Today at Harvesters’ Corner, we will be looking at the efforts of a Co-Impact Sourcing initiative in Pennsylvania, and how the efforts have revived a once-lost art of distillation.

To better understand the importance of why Birch essential oil is so exciting and influential, let’s turn the clock back a bit, to a period nearly 200 years ago. In 1828 a German pharmacologist, Johann Andreas Buchner, produced bitter-tasting yellow crystals he called “salicin,” based on the Latin word for willow, salix. This was not an isolated event. Rather, it was a continuation of the work of an English cleric, the Reverend Edward Stone. Back in the 1750s, Reverend Stone had developed a fascination for willow bark after noticing the bitterness of the bark when it was chewed, and he began to wonder if willow could have medicinal applications. Stone’s first

experiments were on himself, at a time when he had a high temperature. He gathered and dried roughly a pound of bark (0.5 kg) and ground it into a fine powder. He then took small doses of the powder every four hours. He became excited when the powder did seem to help reduce the temperature. He next experimented on the members in his parish when they were sick. Once

again, there seemed to be positive effects from the dried powder, and in 1763, Stone wrote his experiments and findings in a paper he submitted to the Royal Society. Other researchers began working diligently to unlock the secrets of the willow bark.

In 1899, nearly seventy years after Buchner’s success, another German researcher named Felix Hoffman, who worked for a company called Bayer, chemically modified salicin further into the molecule salicylic acid, which became better known as aspirin. The company patented the name, and the pharmaceutical era was born. Science, it seemed, had upstaged nature. (1)

Now move the clock forward in time to 2008. A new essential oil company, called doTERRA, set out to produce 100% pure oils. The annual convention kits, which showcased the newly- developed products for the year, contained a rare gift as a thank-you: a 5mL bottle of Birch oil. Why rare? The company was striving to ensure that the oils they marketed were environmentally sustainable. At that time, Birch oil was not fully sustainable. Hence its inclusion as a gift. As the years passed, more and more people wanted Birch, and the demand began to strain the supply. Finally, in 2016, the inevitable happened. For the first time in the history of the company, Birch was not included in the convention kit.

There is a saying which goes “When one door closes, another door opens.” This was to prove true concerning Birch oil. As Founding Executive and President Emily Wright stated, “This process has been harder than we ever imagined…But an amazing thing about life is that we have the choice to keep pushing forward. To truly pursue what we want in life and don’t give up when we’re faced with trials.” (2) She added that Birch is “among the most resilient of trees. In the fiercest of storms and under the weight of heavy snowfall, they bend but rarely break. This is a good metaphor of our journey to bring pure Birch essential oil to market…” (3)

WHY BIRCH?

Birch oil has an aroma that is both minty and woodsy, and can promote a stimulating, uplifting environment when diffused in a room. The oil also helps promote healthy skin. There are many other uses for the oil, most of which are undergoing peer-reviewed testing to ensure those claims are valid and truthful. One such study conducted by the Aromatic Plant Research Center (ARPC) and published in 2022 states that Birch, “is a pharmacologically important tree,” and

commented on how Birch bark has been used historically as teas and infusions to aid digestive issues and respiratory complaints. (4)

In 2016, the same year the existing sourcing issues came to a head, an email arrived at doTERRA from a judge in Pennsylvania. It turns out that he had Birch trees on his land. These trees were only good to him as pulpwood for paper, and he was exploring other possible markets for the trees. The judge had contacted many essential oil companies concerning the trees, only to be told that the other companies weren’t “interested in distilling pure Birch because  they already had Birch oil,” Emily Wright shared as she announced one of doTERRA’s newest products for 2023. Then she added, almost as an afterthought, “Or so they thought.” (5)

In order to better understand the characteristics of Birch oil, the above-mentioned study by the ARPC tested twenty-seven commercially available samples of Birch oil. Their conclusion is a sad testament to the traditional essential oil industry, with most of the samples exhibiting abnormally-high levels of methyl salicylate, a naturally-occurring compound found in wintergreen oil. While it is true that Birch oil is high in methyl salicylate, like wintergreen oil, there are other critical components that give each oil a specific pattern, or “fingerprint” when being tested. The study continues stating, “Sweet birch markers (o-guaiacol, veratrole, 2-E-4-Z-decadienal, and 2-E-4-E-decadienal) were not detected in any of the tested commercial samples.” (4) In other words, none of the twenty-seven samples tested showed any evidence of Birch oil in them, contrary to their product labels claiming otherwise.

As doTERRA began exploring the possibility of using the Birch trees in Pennsylvania as a suitable source, a major roadblock soon arose. It is very difficult to distill Birch oil from the tree bark. It is so difficult in fact, that there was not a single commercial distillery for Birch in the entire world. Ben Platt, Strategic Sourcing Director at doTERRA, stated, “we have been able to procure birch bark pretty easily…so we were able to send pure birch bark to different distillers across the world. And each of them could prove that there was birch oil in the bark, but none of them could really prove the process to obtain that oil.” (6) The art of distilling the oil was a skillset thought lost to history.

As it turns out, there was still someone who knows the secrets.

Enter Grant “Skip” Cavanaugh. Skip’s father had distilled oils in the early years of the Twentieth century and passed the secrets to his son. Skip Cavanaugh says, “I’ve been around Birch stills since I was three years old…I was excited that someone was interested. I’ve seen fledgling businesses start up and go away and big chemical companies, they found a way to replicate it through chemistry, but it’s not natural.” (7)

Through a lot of trial and error, plus Skip Cavanaugh’s knowledge, a distillation process was developed. Hard-earned knowledge was also gleaned from Esseterre, doTERRA’s distillation plant in Bulgaria. The sum of this knowledge has enabled a new distillery, Woodside Oils, to begin commercial development of a true 100% pure Birch oil.

HOW IS BIRCH PROCESSED?

Wood oils come from a variety of parts of the plant. Some, like Frankincense and Myrrh, come from the resinous sap tediously gathered from the trees. Others, like Douglas Fir, distill the oil from the needles. Then there are some, like Arborvitae, where the bark itself is distilled. Birch falls into this latter category. Birch trees get harvested to be made into paper products, but the bark has little to no commercial value. Woodside Oils has reached agreements for lumber yards in the region to debark the Birch trees. The material is then shipped to Woodside, which runs the bark through their stills. The remaining bark is then sold for mulch. “We’re not taking anything out of the supply chain,” observes A.J. McGarity, doTERRA Strategic Sourcing Special Initiatives Manager. “All we’re doing is babysitting the bark and giving it a bath before sending it back.” (8) It takes three tons (6,000 pounds/2,722 kg) of bark to obtain one quart (946mL) of oil.

All told, it has taken seven years and untold quantities of blood, sweat, and tears to bring Birch oil back to the market. Skip Cavanaugh approves. He says concerning doTERRA, “They are making essential oils, and it’s going to be natural, back the way it was. It’s, ah, progressively moving backwards, to be more natural, and to me, that’s a good thing, a very good thing.” (9)

Nature has again upstaged science. Birch is back, baby!

Have you had experiences before with Birch oil? Feel free to leave a comment below. As always, remember to subscribe if you haven’t already, and share this post with your friends. To purchase a bottle of Birch essential oil, the only 100% pure oil on the market, click here. Join us in a few weeks as we take a closer look at just what Co-Impact Sourcing is, and the benefits it brings to growers and harvesters around the world, here at Harvesters’ Corner.

Sources:

(1)  Martyr, Phillipa. Hippocrates and willow bark? What you know about the history of aspirin is probably wrong. 18 October 2020, <https://theconversation.com/hippocrates -and-willow-bark-what-you-know-about-the-history-of-aspirin-is-probably-wrong-148087> Accessed 20 Oct 2023.

(2)  doTERRA Convention, September 14, 2023.

(3)  Ibid.

(4)  Dosoky NS, Poudel A, Satyal P. Authentication and Market Survey of Sweet Birch (Betula lenta L.) Essential Oil. Plants (Basel). 2022;11(16):2132. Published 2022 Aug 16. Online. <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9412571/> Accessed 24 October 2023.

(5)  doTERRA Convention, September 14, 2023.

(6)  Ibid.

(7)  Ibid.

(8)  Birch Co-Impact Sourcing Brochure.

(9)  doTERRA Convention, September 14, 2023.