SWIM knew someone who cuts down trees for a living, they were clearing on crown land under power lines and everything had to have the chop. Large trunk sections were recovered from selected trees and the bark removed. Initially it was noticed that the inner bark was a white/creamy colour which over the next week or two yellowed quite noticeably. Bark was pounded and outer bits partially remove, inner bark was chopped up and blended and extracted using naphtha 80% xylene 20% the organic layer was very yellow and product was the colour of urine after a vitamin B tablet.
Now the interesting bit, as the solvent dried, some wax like crystal plates started to form. After a few days these were recovered and there was still a lot of yellow oil left. This oil was scraped up and over 2 or 3 minutes started to change consistency almost like some kind of polymerase reaction. The clear "oil" went milky and started to harden up, in 5 minutes all the oil was now completely solid and able to be scraped up.
It was really weird, the oil was viscous and went solid so quickly. I think that maybe it didn't know how to crystallise properly and needed some kind of shock to change phase.
1.2% yield on the first pull with 100ml solvent per 100g bark. This seems to have removed 95% spice from solution.
I am a leaf on the the wind, watch how I soar!