Abstract: The volatile oil in michelia hedyosperma lew was extracted by steam distillation.By using the orthogonal experimental designing,the technological conditions for extraction of volatile oil from michelia hedyosperma lew were determined as follows: ① time of soaking: 20 h;② solid-liquid ratio: 1 to 10;③ particle size of michelia hedyosperma lew: <1 190 μm.Relative content of volatile oil found under the optimum conditions was 9.12%.Tweenty two compounds were found and identified by GC-MS,among which safrole was found to hold the highest relative content of 92.81%,and to be the main component of the volatile oil.