The conifer or evergreen trees yield an amazing variety of essential oils which have yet to be fully explored. Their distillation only began about two or three-hundred years ago in Europe. This is the plant family that originally had the idea of even generating essential oils!! This was 300 million years ago, to be exact. (200 million years later, the flowering plants decided that the conifers were onto a good thing...).

Today, the family of firs produces the greatest variety of oils, including Grand fir, Silver fir, Siberian fir, Balsam fir and Douglas fir, variously distilled in temperate zones such as Quebec, France, Switzerland and the North Balkans. Spruces would be next, prominently Black spruce, White spruce, Norway spruce and Hemlock spruce. Juniper berry oil is uniquely produced from the fruit, not the needles.

The steam-distilled oil of the various conifers is generally fresh-camphoraceous, with a green "pine-needle" middle note and resinous, deep-rooty bottom notes. Some are tweaked with lyrical lemony notes, such as Grand fir and Douglas fir, while others sink truly deep into near-inaudible subwoofer range: this is the case with Black spruce, White spruce and Scotch pine in particular.

Try making a blend of at least four of the conifer oils—pretty much any four—and you will witness a new universe being created: floral, sweet, woody and many other subtle notes will appear as if by magic, out of nowhere. The process of spontaneous generation.