People often think of ravintsara as a shrub. Now, as we can see in the photo, the tree can be relatively large!
So, what’s the real size of the ravintsara tree?
It is a tree of the laurel, camphor and cinnamon family. These trees can reach between 20 and 30 meters in height.
Have you ever seen a magnificent bay leaf in France rising high? They are of the same family, the ravintsara can rise as high, as you can see.
But then why do we often see ravintsara much smaller?What does a ravintsara tree look like?
When they are high, the leaves are difficult to access for harvesting. Because these are the leaves we seek to harvest. As a reminder, “ravin” means “sheet” and Tsara means “good”: the right sheet or sheet for everything. The one that allows us our organic ravintsara essential oil
To be able to work them, it is easier for these trees to be at human height. So we cut them regularly so that they don’t go too high.
Here, in the picture, you can see a tree almost 15 years old that has not been pruned. You can see the true size of a ravintsara. It is the tree of a producer in Madagascar who uses it to harvest the seeds and make his own nursery of ravintsara. We’re going to be doing that very soon.
Even if the ravintsara is of the same family as the laurel sauce, and the camphor, are they different?
First, their foliage does not have the same shade, their color is relatively different. In addition, their respective essential oils do not have the same properties: The ravintsara essential oil is as you already know an excellent immune stimulant, and a decongestant of the respiratory tract. The essential oil of laurel sauce (noble) relieves digestion disorders. It is effective against colic, in short several stomach aches. The yield of a ravintsara is 3 times that of the bay-sauce (100 kg for 1 litre of essential oil, bay-sauce: 300 kg of leaves for 1 litre of essential oil).
The camphor tree differs from the ravintsara in particular, by the production of molecules, the ravintsara produces no camphor when it evolves at an average altitude of 1000 m. Regarding the properties of camphor essential oil, they also differ from those of ravintsara: anti-inflammatory, analgesic, it helps in rheumatism.