Often I am greeted with a perplexed look when I talk about the different sorts of ingredients that I use in my formulations, especially when it comes to the difference between cold-pressed plant oils and plant essential oils. This can indeed be a slightly confusing subject so today I’d like to set the record straight…
The world of plants offers to us an array of botanical treasures with which to work. A single plant, in its pure and unprocessed form can yield us leaves, fruits, flowers, bark and roots – these parts we can call quite simply the ‘herbs.’ I put ‘herbs’ in quotes here because botanically speaking an herb is a plant that does not produce a woody stem and dies back at the end of the growing season. However, among herbalists we speak of an herb as any plant that possesses healing properties. These are what we use to make teas, to infuse into oils, to make poultices and compresses, and to add as supplements to our diets. Herbs are the physical basis for many of my formulations and may be used in both their dried and fresh forms. Here we have lovely example of handful of dried rose petals…
Then we come to those certain plants that contain useful and nourishing oils that humans have learned to extract. These are also called vegetable oils and the best of these come from cold-pressing the oil out of the plant material (heat and chemical extraction are also used, but as we can surmise these methods compromise the quality and integrity of the oil.) Many of the most well known oils in the natural beauty world are coconut, jojoba, sesame, almond, rosehip seed, castor, grapeseed, etc… These plant oils are useful in cosmetic formulations not only for their moisturizing properties that benefit the skin but also because they can be carrier oils for the highly concentrated essential oils. Plant oils themselves generally do not have a strong scent, at least in comparison to the essential oils. Here is a photo of one of my favorite plant oils, also derived from the Rose: (photo from Mountain Rose Herbs)
Essential oils are the jewels of my herbal apothecary and the precious essence of the plant itself. They are the most concentrated volatile oils of a plant which are captured most commonly through a steam distillation process. It usually requires a lot of plant material to produce a small quantity of oil, and so essential oil prices are often quite high. These oils possess strong and highly therapeutic aromas…hence their use in aromatherapy. They are therapeutic on many levels and work primarily through the olfactory system though which they release their healing properties internally. But they are also useful on a topical level, blended into a carrier oil. Most of the essential oils that I use were chosen for their specific therapeutic action on the skin – as cell rejuvenating especially. My favorites are Helichrysum, Carrot Seed, Geranium and Lavender for this purpose. There are so many beautiful essential oils and once you have become familiar with their properties and their pure scents you will never be able to return to the synthetic perfume smells that we are unfortunately so bombarded with. I turn my nose up at these artificial imitations!
Here’s another example from the lovely Rose in its essential oil form (from the beautiful and out-of-this world collection of Floracopeia):
Hopefully this helps clear up some of the confusion surrounding the different types of oils and how they are derived. There are so many useful and healing plants that exist – sometimes all we need to do is reach out our hands to receive their abundance!
