Teucrium montanum Essential Oils Variability in the Balkan Peninsula

Teucrium montanum is an evergreen shrub that is widespread in Europe. The aim of this study was to determine the composition of the essential oils of T. montanum and their relationship to ecology, morphology and genetics. The essential oils were analysed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and the data were evaluated by multivariate statistics and multiple regression. This species showed a remarkable variability of essential oils in the Balkan Peninsula. All registered compounds were used to define four chemotypes that showed no spatial regularity and did not correlate with most bioclimatic parameters. The classification of samples into chemotypes and different categorical variables proved to be completely independent. Moreover, the identified compounds showed no correlation with the bioclimatic parameters, including other categorical variables. To study such a complex phenomenon as the variation of essential oils of T. montanum, a different sampling approach must be adopted (e.g., 'one individual, one sample'), but this could affect the viability of the population of this species.