Jojoba, say it with me ho Ho ba

Often mispronounced and sometimes misunderstood. This is one of my favorite skin care oils for the winter time. Why is my winter time "go to" oil? We can get to that.

Jojoba fruit

But first, lets learn a bit about the Simmondsia chinenis plant. 
When I was a child, we would go on nature walks. I will never forget the little set of books my Grandmother had at the cottage. In it were these fantastic illustrations and facts about the plant from the Latin name to the plants medicinal properties. This practice has stayed with me even now. I like to understand more than the surface information about the plants I use in products. I believe that the more we understand then the better equipped we are to make the right choices or ourselves. 
So, about that Jojoba plant. A native to the desert areas of Arizona and Southern California, the determined little shrub can grow about 15 feet high but the roots dig deep into the crust to find any source of water. It's woody boughs hold greyish leathery leaves all year long and the life span of one plant can go back hundreds of years, well one to two hundred at least. 

Jojoba flowers

The species is dioecious, meaning that one plant supplies the pollen and the other the flowers for seeds. Or, as Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock would explain, "It takes two to make a thing go right, It takes two to make it out of site."  Since the flowers that bloom are odorless, no insect would polinate so the Jojoba needs to rely on the wind and luck that a male plant is near by and releasing pollen. An interesting side note, in the wild the plants maintain a harmonious balance of 50:50 so for every flowering shrub, there is a polinator. Talk about balanced harmony! Polination happens in March and the harvesting of the seeds happens in October. With Jojoba, you don't pick the beans/seeds, you wait until they drop to the ground then you gather them up. The seeds are then pressed or crushed to extract the oils.Half of the weight of the seed is oil, not a bad yield. So how many does it take to make one gallon of oil? about 1700 seeds in a pound and 17 pounds to one gallon of oil so 28,900 give a seed or two. 



The oil that is pressed from the seed is very interesting indeed. Unlike other plant oils, Jojoba yields a liquid that is really a polyunsaturated liquid wax very similiar to Sperm Whale oil. Because of the unique cheical composition of this liquid it is virtually timeless. It wont go rancid, wont oxidize, and wont break down under extreme temperatures. And here is why it took off like wild fire in the cosmetic and skin care industry, from perfumes to shampoo to cleansers and creams, Jojoba is like liquid gold. 

Jojoba begining to ripen. 

So why is this my favorite winter oil? Because of the thick waxy oil and its ability to lay down a mousturizing barier to the harsh dry air of winter. Think about what this seed went through and the adaptive nature of.... well... nature. It is not surprising that the oil extracted would have such tremendous qualities. The harshness of the desert heat and the scarcity of life giving water has tempered the fruit to bare an oil that has a tremendously long life and that protects against scarcity. 

The People of the First Nation knew all of the amazing gifts the Jojoba had to offer and made great use of the seeds such as salves for wounds, conditioning balms for skin, emolient for softening animal hides, a beverage from boiling the beans, and when needed, they would chew on the nuts to help stave off hunger. 

You can find Organic Jojoba oil in all of our Whipped Body Butters, all of our Bath Fizzy bombs, our Pulse Point Aromatics and even a couple of our Organic soaps.  You can also find Tres Spa prodyucts on Amazon