to achieve a detailed chemical characterization and to find the changes in the composition the volatiles of lavandula latifolia, salvia lavandulifolia and thymus mastichina were analyzed through gc-fid/ms and a total of 47, 48 and 48 compounds were identified, respectively. 1,8-cineol+limonene was the main compound in the three species. three extracting methodologies were used: hydrodistillation (hd), microdistillation (md) and dichloromethane extraction (ex). the amount of volatile compounds was affected by the kind of method used and by the kind of species analyzed, thus, s. lavandulifolia produced a higher amount of volatiles with the ex and t. mastichina with md. hd showed significantly lower amount of volatiles for the three species. with hd and md a higher amount of -pinene was obtained. md produced a higher proportion of 1,8-cineol+limonene. canonical discrimination function was done using the two most predictable compounds to distinguish among techniques revealing the method used for each species.