RESUMEN
The vapour distillation was used to extract the volatile oil of Chimonanthus salicifolius with different storage time, determine the content of cineole in volatile oil by GC, to study the influence of storage time on the content of volatile oil and cineole of C. salicifolius. We found that the content of volatile oil in fresh herbs of C. salicifolius was 0.023 0 mL x g(-1), it was decreased to 0.020 0, 0.017 5 mL x g(-1) respectively after storing for 4, 12 months; the GC methodological study of precision, stability and repeatability, RSD < 2%, the average recovery rate was 99.50%, RSD 1.7%; the content of cineole in fresh volatile oil was 54.30%, it was increased to about 62% and remained stably with the time. Therefore, the content of volatile oil and cineole of C. salicifolius can change with the storage time; GC method for the determination of the content of cineole is accurate, reliable, specific and repeatable, it's suitable as a quality control method of C. salicifolius.