Argan /are-gone/, Argania spinosa

Stepping out of my house, looking past the donkey poop, dusty road, and a ditch full of plastic shopping bags, what do I see? I gentle mountain dotted solely with argan trees and an occasional olive or fig tree. Argan? What? What's that? It's a tree endemic only to my corner of Morocco (although apparently is now also growing well in Israel), and designated by UNESCO as demonstrating a model means of sustainable development. Argan nuts are harvested by the locals, who press the oil for culinary and cosmetic use. With an extremely low oil-output per kilogram of nuts, yet packed with health benefits, argan oil is not surprisingly a huge hit in high-end European and North American boutiques.

Back in the Moroccan countryside, however, argan is still a huge hit. Family's in the bled know and love argan oil, using it in their cuisine and as a beauty product for their hair and skin. They also know how incredibly time-consuming the oil production is. This year's harvest is now over. For most of July, however, my host family spent all day trailing the mountainside, picking the nuts from the ground, tossing them in bags, and then leading their donkey down the hillside, into their courtyard home, where they spread the argan nuts to dry in the sun before cracking them open and pressing the seeds for oil.


Read more: The New York Times knows this and this, and Wikipedia knows this. Peak your interest, perhaps?

Photos courtesy of NYT.