The switch from traditional skincare to natural, plant-based skincare can be confusing. There are so many plant botanicals, extracts, and oils that it can be hard to determine which ones you need and which ones are best for your skin.
At Furtuna Skin, we’re botanists, farmers, and skincare experts. From the 500 plant varieties and 50 medicinal herbs that grow on our land to the 12,000 olive trees that produce our award-winning, extra virgin olive oil, we understand the synergism between phytochemicals and skin function.
Together, we’ll explore the top 10 plants that help create radiance and restoration in your skin and tell you how to harness the power of each of them in your daily skincare routine.
1. Olive Oil
Our single-source, organic extra virgin olive oil is at the foundation of every luxury skincare product we create. Our olive trees, some strains exclusive to our farm, produce some of the world’s purest and most potent olive oil available.
Olive oil is rich in essential fatty acids, vitamin E, nutrients, and phytocompounds, making it a skincare powerhouse. It hydrates deeply, acting as both a humectant and emollient to soften and moisturize the skin.
The fatty acid profile helps restore the skin barrier, while antioxidants protect skin from oxidative stress. We use olive oil as the vehicle for extracting our plant botanicals by Soundbath® extraction method. This gentle technique removes plant compounds from the leaves and stems into our olive oil while preserving the phytonutrients contained inside them.
2. Anchusa Azurea
These wild-foraged, organic blue flowers grown on our farm are the feature of our signature Splendore Anchusa® Complex, which helps defend against free radical damage. Used for centuries for medicinal purposes, this flower has an exceptionally high level of antioxidants for a wild, edible Mediterranean plant.
Referred to as a miracle plant, this flower also boasts the skin-loving power of vitamins C, B, and E, furthering its ability to help support visibly healthy skin and radiance while adding the benefits of antioxidants that help protect against environmental stressors.
Available in many of our products, anchusa is a powerful component of our Face and Eye Serum, a double-duty skincare tool that specifically developed for the skin on the face and around the delicate eye area.
3. Bakuchiol
Referred to as nature’s retinol, this plant delivers the age-defying properties but without any harsh, irritating side effects.
Bakuchiol works by helping boost the natural production of collagen, which declines with age. As we age, we lose about 1% of our collagen each year, but this plant interacts with the skin to help visibly improve its elasticity.
Because your skin does most of its healing and restorative work at night, you’ll find bakuchiol in our Nightly Renewal Cream. Applied nightly before bed, our cream goes to work, helping rejuvenate your skin. You’ll wake up to healthier-looking, happier, and more radiant skin night after night.
4. Hawthorn
Wild and organic, we harvest hawthorn on our sustainable farm and hand-harvest it to ensure the skin-nourishing compounds remain intact once we add it to our products. Loaded with vitamin C, hawthorn is an excellent visible skin brightener, helping to fade the look of hyperpigmentation and restore a more noticeably even skin tone.
Hawthorn’s skin beneficial properties also include visible skin tightening and lifting.
5. Lilac Extracts
The power of lilac in its purest form, an extraction method called Enfleurage, helps us safely remove a highly concentrated amount of lilac extract from organically grown plants. Known to contain verbascoside, a compound shown to reduce the appearance of dark circles under the eyes, it also helps visibly restore delicate eye skin more susceptible to developing fine lines and wrinkles.
By helping tighten and visibly restore the skin, lilac extract (found in our Eye Revitalizing Cream) can help transform the skin under your eyes, reducing visible puffiness, fading the look of dark circles, and smoothing over the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles.
Use our Eye Revitalizing Cream day and night on cleansed skin for best results. Most users see visible results within two weeks of continued use.
6. Spirulina
Spirulina is a powerful skincare ingredient that is often added to health products to provide optimum gut health. This potent plant helps keep the skin barrier looking healthy by ensuring the skin's pH level is normal.
Products and environmental stressors can sometimes interfere with your skin barrier’s pH balance. This can weaken the skin barrier and cause it to lose some of its function. In response, your skin may become dry, irritated, and show signs of aging.
Spirulina helps ensure the microflora living on the skin are healthy and active, and provides the power of phycocyanin, an antioxidant that helps protect skin. You can find spirulina in our Replenishing Balm, a rich, velvety smooth balm that helps comfort and soothe stressed skin.
7. Asparagus
We grow wild, organic asparagus on our farm and harvest it using sustainable and ethical methods that ensure it continues to grow in our rich soil for decades to come. Asparagus contains numerous vitamins, like A, B9, C, E, and K, which help protect skin with antioxidants and keep skin hydrated.
Packed with emollients, it visibly improves skin’s overall texture when used daily by smoothing over rough patches and addressing areas of dryness. You’ll find it in our Biphase Moisturizing Oil. An award-winning facial oil, our moisturizing oil is formulated with olive oil, jojoba oil, and twelve wild-foraged, organic plants to help restore radiance, and re-enliven the skin.
8. Wild Lamb’s Quarter
Nature’s great equalizing agent, this plant is known to help reestablish balance in your skin. If you have combination skin, lamb’s quarter helps absorb excess oil in oily areas and support hydration in dry areas.
Working with your skin’s sebaceous glands, wild lamb’s quarter helps bring your skin back to homeostasis, ensuring all areas are properly hydrated without being greasy. You can find wild, organic lamb’s quarter as part of our Circadian Rhythm Complex in our Daily Renewal Cream. This complex helps support your skin’s rhythm for skin that radiates a healthy glow.
9. Olive Leaf Water
You could say we’re a little olive obsessed. When we harvest our olives, we also use the leaves to promote a fully sustainable extraction process that involves almost zero waste. Using the olive tree's highly potent leaves, we infuse our water-based products, like our Micellar Cleansing Essence, to create botanical water that nourishes and deeply hydrates.
Loaded with important phytochemicals, olive leaf extract has been known to visibly reduce irritation and soothe stressed skin by minimizing the appearance of redness, hydrating dry areas, and helping cleanse the skin of dirt and excess oil.
Our Micellar Cleansing Essence can be used twice daily and is an important first step in preparing skin for other serums and products. Working as a cleanser, toner, and essence, it gently removes impurities and keeps pores appearing tight without stripping skin of its natural moisture or leaving it raw and feeling irritated.
10. Chicory
Used for health benefits and as an alternative to coffee in New Orleans, chicory is known for being potent and effective in providing skin-loving benefits. Rich in antioxidants, vitamins, peptides, and beta carotene, chicory restores skin elasticity and visibly lifts and conditions the skin.
We include chicory in our After Shave Serum, a soothing double-duty product that works as an age-defying serum and skin soother. Our serum works daily after shaving to support skin balance, reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles, and help defend the skin against environmental stressors.
Getting What Your Skin Needs
At Furtuna Skin, we focus on sustainably growing the clean, organic ingredients your skin needs. We know that the future is clean beauty, and our plants are at the heart of everything we do.
Our products are tested on all skin types to ensure they are powerfully effective yet gentle enough for even the most sensitive skin types.
For a survey of some of our favorites, we recommend our Custom Discovery Set, which includes the travel sizes of some of our best-selling products. To kickstart your custom, plant-based skincare journey, the Transformation Set offers an uncomplicated, three-step approach.
Clean skincare that is sustainably sourced, responsibly farmed, and carefully harvested to remain powerfully potent? We did that, and we’ll continue to do it for decades so you can trust that the ingredients you put on your skin have a beneficial purpose.
Sources: