African Wildlife & Environment Issue 85

FAUNA, FLORA & WILDLIFE

FORAGING FROM THE VELD MOEPEL: A FORAGER’S DREAM FRUIT

The evergreen Transvaal Milkwood Mimusops zeyheri is commonly known in Afrikaans as the Moepel tree, Mmupudu in Northern Sotho, Umpushane in Zulu and Mubululu in Venda. We couldn’t wait for the green berries to ripen during the spring and summer months, and when ripe the foraging for its almost dry, sweet-tasting oval fruit had endless possibilities of what we could make in the kitchen to keep its goodness for the winter months to come. The locals had their traditional way of forming the pounded fruit into palm-sized patties, placed onto pieces of tin in the open to dry in the sun for later winter use. The leaves are used throughout the year as a tea, for wound treatment or added to food for their nutritional value. In a good rainfall year the fruit would be up to four cm in oval length, but usually it was two to

I grew up with the ‘Moepel’, as we commonly called it, a favourite tree growing on our farm on the southern slopes of the Magaliesberg mountain. It was always a competition between the monkeys, birds and the rest of us to collect the deep yellow-most delicious ripe fruit that would grow from the sweetest crop that this precious tree produced.

Sandy Roberts

42 | African Wildlife & Environment | Issue 85 (2024)