α-Cadinol

Aroma and sensory profile

Alpha-cadinol is a quiet, dry wood note. Fragrance references type it herbal and woody and describe it neat simply as herb and wood [1]. It is a white crystalline solid melting at 74 to 76 °C, so it does not pour and does not diffuse; in a conifer heartwood oil it is the part that lingers as a faint, dry, slightly medicinal woodiness after the pinenes and cedrenes have gone. Its close relative T-cadinol, an epimer with the same skeleton, is described as odorless when pure but balsamic and earthy in mixtures [1].

The molecule is a cadinane sesquiterpene alcohol with four stereocenters, and the natural material carries the (1R,4S,4aR,8aR) configuration [2]. The cadinol family is a set of epimers, alpha-, T-, delta-, and tau-cadinol among them, that differ only in the orientation of the isopropyl group and the hydroxyl, and analytical papers frequently list them together or misassign them. No panel description of the mirror-image enantiomer was found, so no claim about how the two enantiomers differ in odor is made here.

Effects and research

No animal or human study of alpha-cadinol was found. Its literature is about wood, not people. In the twig oil of Taiwania cryptomerioides, where alpha-cadinol is the main component at 45.9 percent, it was identified alongside beta-eudesmol and ferruginol as the source of the oil's activity against wood-decay fungi [3]. In Chamaecyparis formosensis twig oil, alpha-cadinol and tau-muurolol showed excellent activity against Fusarium oxysporum, Rhizoctonia solani, Colletotrichum gloeosporioides, and Fusarium solani, with IC50 values below 50 micrograms per milliliter [4], and the same two compounds from incense cedar leaf oil strongly inhibited Rhizoctonia solani and Fusarium oxysporum at the same threshold [5]. A 2026 biosynthesis paper that engineered its production in bacteria notes that tau-muurolol and alpha-cadinol have been reported to show lipid-lowering activity [8].

A caution on the literature: most of the pharmacology attached to "cadinol" in reviews concerns T-cadinol, the epimer isolated from scented myrrh, which has calcium-antagonist and immunological data of its own. Those results do not transfer to alpha-cadinol.

Natural sources

Alpha-cadinol is a heartwood terpene of the cypress family. It reaches 45.9 percent in Taiwania cryptomerioides twig oil [3], 12.4 percent in Chamaecyparis formosensis twig oil [4], 10.9 percent in the wood oil of Chamaecyparis obtusa var. formosana [6], and 1.6 percent in incense cedar leaf oil [5]. Among junipers it appears at up to 2.7 percent in common juniper needle oil [7] and at 2.6 percent in Juniperus oxycedrus oil [9], and its level in Juniperus przewalskii tracks the tree's altitude and climate [10]. Fragrance databases add it at 1 to 1.5 percent in cinnamon fruit oil and about 1 percent in clary sage, with traces in angelica root, bay leaf, calamus, cananga leaf, carrot seed, cistus, and cypress oils [1]. In cannabis it is a trace sesquiterpene, occasionally reported in woody chemotypes.

Boiling point and vaporization

PubChem compiles alpha-cadinol's boiling point as 302 to 304 °C at 760 mmHg, imported from fragrance industry data [2], and this profile uses 304 °C (579 °F), replacing the 253 °C the site previously listed, for which no source was found. Alpha-cadinol is a solid below 74 °C [1], so in a cool sample it does not evaporate at all; it dissolves into the surrounding oil and stays. It is among the least volatile compounds on this site, in the range of nerolidol, and it survives drying, storage, and cooking that strip every monoterpene. No thermal degradation study of alpha-cadinol was found.

Industries and uses

Fragrance: alpha-cadinol contributes a dry, herbal-woody base and a fixative effect in conifer and cedar accords and is available as a natural isolate [1]. Aromatherapy: Taiwan cypress, juniper, and cedar heartwood oils are its carriers; no hazard data specific to it were found, so the caution is the general, mild one for solid sesquiterpene alcohols in aged oils [1][3].