Reflections on Jojoba's Preferred Habitat

Jojoba is a very curious plant to me.

Capable of producing one of the most useful and moisturizing ingredients for human skin, it also grows in one of the harshest and driest environments imaginable - the desert.

Ironic, isn't it?

In our most recent venture into the Sonoran Desert, we went searching for a wild Jojoba plant.  Part of it was curiosity.  Part of it was respect.  If this was going to be one of the main ingredients in our body oil, we wanted to better understand where it came from - not just on a supplier sheet, but in real life.

And we found it.

It wasn't what we'd call an "easy" search.  That slight call of daring adventure led us to leap into the challenge with only a handful of notes about where it'd be and what it looked like.  But from that still very fun experience, we were able to refine our notes and develop our own perspective on the plant itself and where it grows.

Where it Began and Where it is Now

Jojoba plants originated in the Sonoran desert.  Of course, while this particular note wasn't something we could have personally confirmed without extensive scientific research, we did successfully find them there.

And seeing them there reminded us of how at the end of the day, it really is simply, a desert plant.

But instead of being limited to just the Sonoran desert, the jojoba plant is now being cultivated in many arid places around the world.  Like Australia, Israel, Argentina, Peru, and so much more.  Its usefulness and the world's growing understanding of its benefits has allowed this plant to travel far beyond its native home.

But before we learned to harvest, bottle, label, and apply its wax esters to our skin, this humble little plant simply had to figure out how to survive.

The Perfect Spot

Interestingly, the jojoba plant seems to be a bit picky about where they like to grow - near the base of mountains, foothills, slopes, and washes.

Oddly specific when you think about it, but there is a clear logic to it. 

By growing in these areas, they're able to get a little extra water from rainfall and runoff moving down from higher ground.  But also, by avoiding low valleys or places where water can pool, they also avoid getting too much water.

Additionally, these areas tend to have rocky, sandy, gravelly, and fast-draining soil, which allows for water to pass through instead of sitting around the roots.

This balance, we found, is extremely important - its rejection of abundance and a preference for just enough.

Enough water to live and enough dryness to remain itself.

Quiet and Humble

Jojoba is surprisingly easy to overlook.

For being such an impactful plant for humans, it's far removed from being considered anything visually dramatic.

Honestly, that's probably why we don't really see it in skincare photos.

It doesn't have that awe of a beautiful desert bloom or the immediate recognition of a tall saguaro cacti.  It's shrubby, grayish-green, and easy to confuse with other desert shrubs.

In a way, this actually made finding the plant a little more meaningful.

And in an ironic way, the amount of confusion, uncertainty, and time we felt trying to figure out if we had actually found it - along with the anti-climactic recognition that we actually did find it - almost felt like it was the way it would've wanted to be found.

And maybe that's another part of the lesson too.

Some of the most useful and wonderful things in nature don't really announce themselves or need to be loud.  They simply exist, adapted perfectly to where they are.

The Recurring Theme

When we reflected back on our experience, the idea of restraint seemed to tie everything together.

Too much water and jojoba suffers.

Too little, and it must endure.

The soil cannot hold on too tightly.

And the landscape cannot be too soft.

It is a plant shaped by dryness, roughness, drainage, and pressure.

And while this certainly doesn't make me to want to live in a desert to see if I thrive too, it did make me reflect on the idea of challenges and hardship. 

Not difficulty for the sake of suffering and not harshness for the sake of hardship.  But the kind of pressure that gives shape to something.

Jojoba produces something incredibly useful from a place that looks at first glance, unforgiving.

And maybe you and I are not so different.

Maybe the source of all the creative essence we produce - the ideas, the work, and the things we make and offer - are all also shaped by the conditions through which we grow and subject ourselves to. 

Not too harsh.  Not too easy.  But just difficult enough to grow.