Shea Tree

Shea trees are direct-sown or transplanted, and grow in the dry savannah and woodland habitats to which the species is naturally restricted. They are notably slow to establish, typically taking twenty to thirty years or more to reach maturity and begin bearing fruit, and propagation is complicated by erratic seed germination and by latex exudation from cuttings, which limits vegetative multiplication. Because of these difficulties, researchers have investigated in vitro shoot-tip culture as a way to multiply genotypes more rapidly for larger-scale planting.

Fruit is gathered during the rainy summer months, largely by women and children collecting from wild and semi-wild trees, since the long maturation period has discouraged formal plantations. The thin pulp surrounding the kernel can be eaten fresh or cooked, while the kernels themselves undergo an extended process of boiling, sun-drying, crushing, roasting, milling, kneading, further boiling and filtering before being cooled into solid shea butter.

Storage: Fresh shea fruit keeps for only a few days and needs refrigeration, whereas the finished butter can be kept for several months if stored airtight and refrigerated.

Culinary: The fruit pulp is eaten raw or cooked, made into jams, jellies, baked goods and wine, while the extracted butter is used as a cooking and frying oil, a baking fat, a flavouring for the porridge known as "to," and as an edible oil generally in West Africa; it is also used industrially as a substitute for cocoa butter in chocolate and margarine manufacture.

Cosmetic: Shea butter is a common ingredient in moisturising products such as lip balms, hand creams, facial moisturizers, shampoos and conditioners.

Medicinal: Local healers in West African countries have traditionally used shea butter to address rheumatism, nasal congestion, leprosy, cough and minor bone dislocation.

The shea tree grows wild across a broad savannah belt stretching roughly six thousand kilometres from Senegal to Uganda and into the Ethiopian highlands, occurring naturally in more than twenty African countries. Because the tree takes so long to reach fruiting age, it has largely remained a wild-harvested resource rather than a domesticated plantation crop, with production overwhelmingly drawn from naturally occurring populations. Archaeological evidence of shea butter production dates to the fourteenth century, and the butter was already being imported into Britain by 1846, reflecting a long history of trade even without formal cultivation.