Objective To identify the chemical constituents of volatile oil from the Chinese traditional medicine coastal glehnia root and to compare the differences between coastal glehnia root of different locations.Methods A total of 16 batches of the coastal glehnia root were collected from several major production areas from September 2012 to March 2013, and then they were ground into powder. The volatile oil was extracted from the powder samples using the methods described in Chinese Pharmacopoeia Appendix. Gas chromatography-mass spectometry (GC-MS) was used to get the spectra of volatile oil of each sample and NIST 11.0 database was used to identify the chemical constituents of coastal glehnia root. Results and Conclusion From 16 batches of 48 coastal glehnia root volatile oil samples, we identified 12 common components. The 12 common chemical constituents can serve as the characteristic composition of volatile oil of the coastal glehnia root, and falcarinol is the major main chemical constituent. The three batches collected from Hebei province had fewer chemical components and lower contents. We also found that the coastal glehnia root samples with root bark had more volatile oil components and higher contents than the samples without bark; moreover, eicosapentaenoic acid was only found in the samples with root bark. Peeling the bark may reduce the contents of some volatile oils such as eicosapentaenoic acid, which may affect the medicinal activity of the coastal glehnia root.