At first glance, they could have been asparagus tips. But one bite indicated otherwise — fresh green flavours reminiscent of green beans, accompanied by a minerally deeper taste and a gritty sprinkling of sand across my tongue. ”We’ve been washing them all day,” Julian Melck told us, somewhat apologetically, ”but I picked them in the veld and veldkool is only found in sandy soil.”
We were eating Sunday lunch at Kersefontein, Melck’s guest farm, in the heart of the Cape’s West Coast. Celebrating the seasons and local products, we started with waterblommetjie soup, picked in the vlei, before moving to roast wild boar, shot on the farm, accompanied by veldkool, the lithe spring shoots of Trachyandra falcata.
In 1942 Afrikaans writer C Louis Leipoldt described the plant as ”delicious veld food that city folk have hardly discovered yet”. More than 65 years later not much has changed. Of all the indigenous food plants that comprise our edible heritage, waterblommetjies (Aponogeton distachyos) are the best known and the only one widely sold.
But, while you may not be able to find veldkool at your local supermarket, some enterprising people are looking to change that. Plantsman Alan Sonnenberg has been propagating veldkool, with other indigenous food plants, at Groenfontein Farm, near Ceres. With his partners in the project, food historian Renata Coetzee and farm owner Volker Miros, Sonnenberg is exploring the commercialisation of wild food plants.
”If you’re going to develop a plant,” Sonnenberg says, ”it’s got to be a willing participant. It must have nutritional value and be able to grow in large numbers. In the trials veldkool is quite a prolific producer. Others show promise as culinary herbs, such as wild rosemary (Eriocephalus africanus) and kattekruid (Ballota africana), but as commercial products, we’re quite a way off.”
Last year the project was awarded a South African Food Heritage Award in the Eat In RMB Private Bank Produce Awards for the research and propagation of indigenous food plants. Sonnenberg says as a result of the publicity and recognition, ”there’s a lot more interest and ultimately commercial growers will come on board”.
His partner, Coetzee, is particularly interested in the project’s potential to help disadvantaged communities. ”I hope that these plants will find their way into veld food gardens. Especially for the Khoi people, so they will benefit from it.”
Coetzee has more than a passing interest in the welfare of the Khoi. While she has been interested in traditional African food plants and cultures for more than 50 years, ”I became interested in the Khoi,” she says, ”when I realised they have the oldest food culture in this country and nobody’s done any research into it.” She has spent the past eight years researching their food culture and will be publishing two books on the topic in 2010. Her knowledge is vast and she cheerfully drops names as exotic and unfamiliar as these plants now are to most South Africans, including those who traditionally depended on them for sustenance: raaptol, veldpatat, hantam, wildekoring, kambroor.
”When I did fieldwork research in Namaqualand, the Khoi women all said, wouldn’t I please help them open their homes as guest houses and serve traditional food? They’re such marvellous people, but hulle kry swaar [they have a hard time]. And they know virtually nothing about their own foods any more. So I promised them I’d see whether we couldn’t get veld food gardens going at their own homes.”
The Agricultural Research Council (ARC) is exploring the reintroduction of indigenous crops to increase the food security of subsistence farmers and their rural communities. Willem Jansen van Rensburg, a researcher at the ARC, says the research is mainly investigating leafy indigenous plants, known as Morongo or imagine.
”The nutritional value of some of these crops is similar or sometimes higher than spinach or other leafy vegetables, like cabbage. Some have other compounds which are beneficial, such as antioxidants.” Plants being experimented with include amaranth (Amaranths hybrids), spider plant (Cleome gynandries) and jute (all Co chorus species).
”The taste of these plants is sometimes more acceptable [to local communities] than more modern vet, like Swiss chard,” Jansen van Rensburg says. ”And market research [shows] demand is growing.” But he also echoes Sonnenberg’s words: ”In the long run I believe we could turn these into commercial crops. But a lot more research needs to be done.”
The experts interviewed offered slightly different definitions of heritage food plants, reflecting their varying disciplines and experiences. Renata Coetzee defined them as indigenous plants used by indigenous people. Alan Sonnenberg felt heritage food plants ‘are used within the cultural milieu of poor people, gathered it over a long period of timeâ€. Willem Jansen van Rensberg included exotic and indigenous plants that have become part of the local culinary tradition.
One thing they all agreed on, however, is the importance of propagating and promoting indigenous food plants. Coetzee hopes that making these plants available to growers will prevent communities from removing rare plants from the veld.
Sonnenberg emphasises the importance of indigenous plants as an accessible food source. ‘Vegetables are relatively cheap and widely available. But in the rural areas, it’s a totally different story,†he says.
Jansen van Rensberg says some indigenous plants are better adapted to local climates than non-indigenous plants. With concerns about climate change, their natural variances and diversity will allow them to adapt bett.