argan oil

Southwestern Morocco, from Safi to Guelmim across the Souss valley, the Anti-Atlas and the western High Atlas, where the argan tree is endemic, its native range reaching into Algeria, Mauritania and Western Sahara; Argania spinosa, which Kew files as Sideroxylon spinosum, its kernels pressed for oil by the Imazighen for centuries

Prepared at home as it was needed, in a slow process of hand-malaxing, copper-coloured for eating and golden for cosmetics; propelled out of obscurity in the 1990s by findings about its culinary, cosmetic and medicinal virtues, its prices climbing from 1999; pressed since in women's cooperatives set up in the argan forest villages, sold to tourists and industry, and by 2007 called the most expensive oil in the world

The argan forest was cut for others before its oil was wanted: Charrouf and Guillaume record large quantities of charcoal made from it in the early 1900s for European demand. The oil, a mainstay of the Imazighen for centuries, was propelled out of obscurity in the 1990s and became the subject of US and European cosmetic patents. The knowledge was the women's: argan oil is traditionally prepared only by Amazigh women, the only ones who master every step, and the nomination Morocco sent to UNESCO counts seven tasks, from harvesting the fruit to the warm water added in quantities only an argan woman can master. In Tachelhit the women say argan a'ygan argaz, argan is a man, for the income and the measure of financial autonomy it gives them. They have organised themselves into cooperatives and economic interest groups, and the recognition is on the record: the argan forest was declared a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1998, and in 2014 UNESCO inscribed the practices and know-how themselves on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. The listed heritage is the knowledge, not the oil. This means that the story of argan is one of extraction and also of women who organised and got their knowledge written down.