Plant Of The Week: Jojoba Plant

Jojoba with the botanical name Simmondsia chinensis, and also known as goat nut, deer nut, pignut, wild hazel, quinine nut, coffeeberry, and gray box bush, is native to Southwestern North America. Simmondsia chinensis is the sole species of the family Simmondsiaceae, placed in the order Caryophyllales.

The plant is a native shrub of: the Sonoran Desert, Colorado Desert, and Baja California Desert; and California chaparral and woodlands habitats in the Peninsular Ranges and San Jacinto Mountains. It is found in southern California, Arizona and Utah and Baja California state (Mexico).

Simmondsia chinensis, or Jojoba, typically grows to 3.3–6.6 ft tall, with a broad, dense crown, but there have been reports of plants as tall as 9.8 ft.

The leaves are opposite, oval in shape, 0.79–1.57 in long and 0.59–1.18 in broad, thick, waxy, and glaucous gray-green in color.

The flowers are small and greenish-yellow, with 5–6 sepals and no petals. The plant typically blooms from March to May. 

Each plant is dioecious, with hermaphrodites being extremely rare. The fruit is an acorn-shaped ovoid, three-angled capsule 0.39–0.79 in long, partly enclosed at the base by the sepals. The mature seed is a hard oval that is dark brown and contains an oil (liquid wax) content of approximately 54%. An average-sized bush produces 2.2 lb of pollen, to which few humans are allergic.

Native American uses

Native Americans discovered the importance and versatility of jojoba. During the early 18th century Jesuit missionaries on the Baja California Peninsula observed indigenous peoples heating jojoba seeds to soften them. They then used a mortar and pestle to create a salve or buttery substance. The latter was applied to the skin and hair to heal and condition. The O'odham people of the Sonoran Desert treated burns with an antioxidant salve made from a paste of the jojoba nut.

Native Americans also used the salve to soften and preserve animal hides. Pregnant women ate jojoba seeds, believing they assisted during childbirth. Hunters and raiders ate jojoba on the trail to keep hunger at bay.

The Seri, who utilize nearly every edible plant in their domain, do not regard the beans as real food and in the past ate it only in emergencies.

Jojoba is grown for the liquid wax, commonly called jojoba oil, in its seeds. This oil is rare in that it is an extremely long (C36–C46) straight-chain wax ester and not a triglyceride, making jojoba and its derivative jojoba esters more similar to human sebum and whale oil than to traditional vegetable oils.

Jojoba oil is interesting for the industry because it is odorless and it has a viscosity which is temperature-independent. Applications vary from engine lubricating oil to cooking oil. Jojoba wax is used predominantly for pharmaceutical compounds, specially for skin products. After polymerization, factice can be used for rubber production.

Its use as biodiesel fuel is becoming more and more important. Jojoba oil consists of long straight monoesters of 22 to 44 carbon atoms (as opposed to most vegetable oils which consist of triglycerides), which makes it comparable to diesel in terms of energy density. The pretreatment of jojoba oil for the use of biofuel is simpler compared to that of other mineral and bio-oils and it is expected that combustion of jojoba oil leads to smaller NOx-emissions compared to diesel and does not lead to any SOx emissions.

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