Melaleuca alternifolia has been used to treat all different sorts of infections, and has long been revered for its antiseptic properties. The leaves of the melaleuca tree have been used by the aborigines for centuries, to heal cuts, wounds and skin infections.
Melaleuca alternifolia is also known as tea tree, and the leaves of this native Australian tree can be treated to produce the popular extract tea tree oil. The oil comes from the leaves of Melaleuca alternifolia, and the process used to extract the essential oil from the leaves is steam distillation. While the leaves were used for hundreds of years for medicinal purposes by the native inhabitants of Australia, the wider acknowledgment of tea tree oil as a medicinal substance didn’t occur until after 1922, when Australian chemist Arthur Penfold published a medical paper confirming the antibacterial and antifungal properties of the oil.
Melaleuca alternifolia , commonly known as narrow-leaved paperbark , narrow-leaved tea-tree , narrow-leaved ti-tree , or snow-in-summer , is a species of Melaleuca that is renowed for its essential oils . It is native to Australia . It is the most important species for commercial production of Tea tree oil (melaleuca oil), a topical antibacterial and antifungal agent used in a range of products including antiseptics, deodorants, shampoos and soaps.
Melaleuca alternifolia –Myrtaceae – ‘Oil Tea-Tree ,’ ‘Oil Paperbark.’ – Originally native to a small area in coastal New South Wales, this species has become one of the most important cultivated Australian crops due to the use of it’s essential oil as one of the most important natural antiseptics in the world. The distinctive scent of this oil is quite marked in the crushed foliage in cultivated specimens. In the garden, it is quite adaptable and beautiful, with fissured papery bark and white flower clusters at the branch tips. In the wild, it inhabits swampy habitats, and this means that moist soil types in the garden suit it best, but this is also another area where it shows adaptability- it has happily tolerated the sandy soil at my nursery as well.
Melaleuca alternifolia, or tea tree , is one of the most widely-used homeopathic antiseptics. The oil from the tea tree is helpful to treat stings, wounds, burns, and a variety of skin infections. It is also used as an antibacterial, an antifungal, and an antiviral. It is native to Australia and has been used as medicinal treatments for centuries by the Aborigines. Research has been conducted on its therapeutic properties, making it popular across Australia, Europe, and North America.
Melaleuca alternifolia oil has over 100 components working synergistically together, most of which could not even be identified back in the early years, so an exact nature-identical copy was impossible to synthesize from man-made chemicals. In the Sixties, the oil made a remarkable comeback, the first scientific evidence in decades confirmed that it had a favorable effect in the treatment of boils, gynecological infections and later for varied foot problems and nail bed infections. Now the once sidelined oil was gaining in popularity, and farms were being set up to harvest the oil on a commercial basis.