abstract the leaf oils of psidium guajava and psidium catlleyanum collected in french polynesia have been examined for the first time in tahiti by gc and combined gc/ms. the leaf oil of p. guajava contained a mixture of sesquiterpene hydrocarbons (54.9%) and oxygenated sesquiterpenes (20.9%) with -caryophyllene (18.3%) as the principal sesquiterpene hydrocarbon and selin-11-en-4a-ol (6.9%), -cadinol (3.6%), (e)-nerolidol (3.2%) as the main oxygenated sesquiterpenes. psidium cattleyanum produced oil that was much richer in sesquiterpene hydrocarbons (48.8%) and monoterpene hydrocarbons (10.1%). the main sesquiterpenes present in the oil were -caryophyllene (31.5%) and -humulene (4.4%). the two oils also contained a small amount of aromatic compounds, benzaldehyde (2.4%) in p. guajava oil, and the two isomers (e)-methyl isoeugenol (0.6%) and (z)-methyl-isoeugenol (0.1%) in p. cattleyanum oil.