abstract the essential oil of the roots of hemidesmus indicus r.br, from southern india was investigated by gc and gc/ms. more than 20 components have been identified including 2-hydroxy-4-methoxybenzaldehyde (95.8%) as the significantly dominating compound. additional aroma-active components, responsible for the typical coumarin-like, green (direction of violet-leaf), sweet (direction of heliotropin and lilial) and vanill-like odor impression, such as vanillin and salicylic acid derivatives as well as (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal were found only in very low concentrations (less than 1.0%).