Ingredient

Prickly Pear oil

Opuntia tuna

Prickly pear oil is thought to be one of the best natural ways to maintain skin's youthfulness. It has the most powerful antioxidant compounds and the most effective vitamins... all these in very high concentration levels. A real treat to promote skin's elasticity while smoothing, moisturising and soothing.

The Opuntia tuna belongs to the prickly pear genus, from the cactus family, and is native to the American continent. Looking like big leaves, its large green stem is covered by spikes and a very thorny down. Although its mucilaginous texture may seem strange to some, the stem is edible (after removing the prickly parts!) and is said to taste like green beans.

However, the plant is most famous for the fruit it grows, which gave the cactus its name. Prickly pear fruits are oval and red, with a very juicy and sweet pulp. It's used more often to make juices and jams than to be eaten raw because of the very hard and inconvenient small seeds present in the fruit. But those seeds are not to be thrown away! They are the ones used to make the precious oil: it needs roughly fifty kilos of seeds to produce one kilo of oil, and therefore one tonne of fruit, making it one of the most expensive vegetable oils in the world.

The prickly pear oil found in Lush products is farmed, pressed and processed in Madagascar.