If you’ve ever stood in a purple field in Provence, or looked at a photo of one, there’s a good chance it wasn’t lavender. On the Plateau de Valensole, the postcard view of the lavender-growing region, lavandin covers around 90 to 95 percent of the cultivated fields.
That’s the whole story in one fact. Lavandin looks like lavender, grows where lavender grows, and smells enough like it that most people can’t tell them apart on a shelf. It’s often sold as lavender, sometimes honestly mixed, sometimes not. Here’s what each one actually is, why there is a price gap, and how to tell which one is in your essential oil bottle.
True lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) and lavandin (Lavandula × intermedia) are different plants. Lavandin is a natural cross between true lavender, which grows wild at high altitude, and spike lavender (Lavandula latifolia), which grows lower down. You can tell spike lavender by its strong, sharp, medicinal, herbaceous scent, due to high camphor levels. The hybrid plant produces several times more oil per acre, so it costs less.
Both are good oils. They aren’t interchangeable, and only one is lavender. The hybrid is sterile, so it doesn’t come true from seed. Every lavandin plant is grown from a cutting. Even so, bee pollination is beneficial, increasing the essential oil output of the plant by up to 20%. That’s why lavandin is sold by named variety, most commonly ‘Grosso’ and ‘Super’, each a clone with its own fairly predictable scent. True lavender is generally grown from seed, and its oil varies more from farm to farm and year to year. Lavandin is bigger, hardier, and far more productive. That’s why the price difference.
A hectare of true lavender in Provence produces around 20 kilograms of essential oil. A hectare of lavandin produces 150 to 200. That’s seven to ten times as much oil from the same land, from a plant that’s easier to grow. That doesn’t make lavandin a lesser oil. It’s an agricultural fact, and it means lavandin is the lavender-family scent that most can afford. Most lavender-scented soap, detergent, and candles rely on lavandin, synthetic aroma chemicals, or both. The problem occurs when the cheaper oil (lavandin) carries the name of the more expensive oil (lavender).
Both oils share the same two main components, linalool and linalyl acetate, which is why they smell related. The difference is mostly camphor. True lavender contains very little. It smells soft, sweet, and floral, with a powdery finish. Lavandin contains much more: ‘Grosso’, the most widely grown variety, averaged about 7 percent camphor across samples in one Spanish study. That gives it a sharper, cleaner, more penetrating edge, closer to rosemary, and some noses read it as “medicinal”. ‘Super’ is softer and closer to true lavender. In the lavender trade, a strong camphor note is treated as a sign of lower quality. That’s a judgment about lavender, not about lavandin. In a lavandin, the camphor is the point.
Lavender is one of the most adulterated essential oils on the market. A 2020 bulletin from the Botanical Adulterants Prevention Program (BAPP), a nonprofit industry watchdog, estimated that up to 90 percent of lavender oil products could be considered adulterated in some way. BAPP’s technical director has pointed out that the figure depends on how you define adulteration, and that a typical lavender-labeled soap, shampoo, or lotion can contain no real lavender at all.
Common substitutes, in roughly the order you’d expect, include lavandin, spike lavender, other oils high in linalool, and synthetic linalool and linalyl acetate. Each makes the oil cheaper while keeping a lavender-like smell.
None of this means every bottle labeled lavender is fake. It means “lavender” on its own tells you very little.
Read the botanical name. True lavender is Lavandula angustifolia. You’ll also see Lavandula officinalis, an older name for the same plant. Lavandin is Lavandula × intermedia, or L. hybrida. Spike lavender is L. latifolia. If a label says only “lavender oil” with no Latin name, assume nothing.
Ask for the batch test. A GC/MS report lists what’s in a specific batch of oil. For lavender, the line to look at is camphor: low in true lavender, several percent in lavandin. A producer who can’t or won’t provide a report for the batch you’re buying is telling you something.
Check the price. True lavender costs noticeably more than lavandin, because it has to. A “lavender” oil priced like lavandin probably is lavandin, in whole or in part.
Don’t rely on your nose. Side by side, many people can pick the sharper one. On its own, a good ‘Super’ lavandin passes for lavender with most noses, and a blend of the two is harder still.
Lavandin is a genuinely good oil, and for plenty of uses it’s the better pick.
If you’re using it for any of these, buy lavandin labeled as lavandin and pay lavandin prices. The only bad outcome is paying lavender prices for it.
Most adults can use both lavender and lavandin essential oils without any issues. However, those who have a low tolerance to camphor should take precautions. Keep higher-camphor oils such as lavandin and spike lavender away from babies and young children; use them with more caution during pregnancy; and avoid them if you have epilepsy. True lavender has fewer of those restrictions.
Two cautions apply to both. Oxidized lavender oil can cause skin irritation, so keep the bottle capped, cool and dark, and don’t use oil past its date. Both pose a moderate risk to cats and dogs and should never be diffused around birds.
We sell Lavandula angustifolia, and the producer has a batch GC/MS report on file that can be provided. That isn’t because lavandin is bad. It’s because “lavender” should mean lavender.
If we do add lavandin, it will be named, priced, and sold as lavandin.