Shea
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For the baseball stadium, see Shea Stadium
- For the Name, see Shea (name)
 |
||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Fruit on a shea tree in Sudan
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
| Scientific classification | ||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
| Vitellaria paradoxa C.F.Gaertn. |
Shea (Vitellaria paradoxa, syn. Butyrospermum parkii, B. paradoxa) is a tree indigenous to Africa, occurring in Mali, Cameroon, Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan, Burkina Faso and Uganda. The shea fruit, called a nut, contains a seed much like an avocado, from which is extracted shea butter, which has multiple uses.
Some common names are shétoulou ("shea tree butter") in the Bambara language of Mali and ghariti in the Wolof language of Senegal.
The tree is perhaps better known as Butyrospermum parkii (the genus name meaning "butter seed"; the epithet honouring Mungo Park, who learned of the tree while exploring Senegal). However, Vitellaria paradoxa is the earlier name and has priority, and should therefore be used (a proposal to conserve Butyrospermum parkii failed narrowly).
Shea trees take approximately 30 years to reach maturity.
[edit] External links
- La filière féminine du karité Derived from the shea nut in Sudano-Sahelian Africa, shea butter, or karité, has become an important ingredient in the global billion-dollar cosmetics industry.
