African Wildlife & Environment Issue 76 FINAL

FAUNA, FLORA & WILDLIFE

Foraging food FROM THE VELD

Foraging for many people is a way of survival. The abundant delicious ‘weeds’ that we can use in soups, stews, salads and nourishing stir fries will add nutrition packed with vitamins into our diets at no extra cost. The most sought-out edible weeds have been growing and used for centuries, like the ‘Marogo’which spans a variety of different spinach- like leaves including the Amaranthus species, field mallows, young leaves of the prickly cucumber, pumpkin and calabash vines (incidentally also with their delicious bean-flavoured young tendrils) to the vast array of wild fruit that grows seasonally in our SouthAfrican veld.We are enormously privileged to live in a small country with a diverse climate that has the biggest plant variety in the world, and therefore food foraging and Indigenous Healing plants are so important to the existence of all South Africans. One of my favourite indigenous weeds grew in stark green clumps along themoist river bed and cool corners of the dams on our original farm. It is the commonNutgrass Cyperus esculentus alsoknownas ‘Earth almond’, ‘Hoenderuintjie’ or ‘Insikane’ with its solid stems and bulbous root that form little nuts and tubers. It grows approximately 90 cm in height

As we venture into the ‘new world’ that we are facing and the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic we will find many treasures we never thought of in nature. Many indigenous plants from the veld, and some in our gardens, will give us comfort and encourage a new way of free nutritional living. I hope this short introduction to a few of these fascinating indigenous plants will inspire you, as I have been my whole life, growing up on a farm with these valuable medicinal plants where the unusual became the usual.

Sandy Roberts Photograph JohnWesson

Cyperus esculentus

11 | African Wildlife & Environment | Issue 76 (2020)