Shea, sacred tree in the savanna
If we believe history, the Egyptian queen Nefertiti, whom legendary beauty makes still speak about her more than three thousand years after its reign, would have regularly cover her skin with shea butter during all her life.
Derived from a sacred tree growing in wooded savanna of West Africa, shea has so many properties that all the countries of this world region, from Mali to Burkina Faso passing by Ghana and Nigeria -- use it as well in the field of health, as medicine or cosmetology.
The tree with butter
Wolof term meaning « tree with butter», the word shea indicates the unique specie known of the family of sopotacies. Only growing on savage ground, impossible to cultivate, it may live until three hundred years and reach about fifteen height meters.
Its fruits, called nuts, grow in tight bunches and present under the form of berries of dark green to brown colour, four to eight centimetres long. It is from pulpy and whitish almond contained in the interior of the fruit shell that it makes the famous shea butter. The wood is often used to prepare all sorts o...
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