Blog — castor oil

~detail: Castor oil comes from the seed of the castor plant (Ricinus communis), a broad-leafed flowering plant native to tropical Africa, which spread through pre-historic sea trade to India and the Indonesian islands. It has no close botanical relatives, but is distantly related to the poinsettia and the rubber tree. They are all members of the Euphorbiaceae botanical family, which they share with thousands of other species mostly found on the Indonesian islands. The Castor plant has a long history of medicinal use throughout the Old World, with a large number of uses prescribed particularly by the Ayurvedic system of...