Why not farm with sour figs?
When people talk about “sour figs” or “suurvy” they think jam or bluebottles, but the plants do so much more.
There are two types. The one has deep purple flowers and the leaves and fruit are a bit different from the one with creamy, pink flowers also called “hottentot’s fig”. Their botanical names are Carpobrotus Acinaciformis and Carpobrotus Edulis respectively.
They will grow in the fynbos where there is not too much competition with other plants or in disturbed soil areas.
In California in the United States of America, where many houses are destroyed through fire, as most of them are built of wood, lots of people plant big mats of sour figs around their houses as firebreaks.
Both types of figs have the same medicinal uses. The juice of the leaves have traditionally been used as an antiseptic and people gargled with it to treat mouth and throat infections. It has also been taken orally for dysentery, digestive troubles, tuberculosis and as a diuretic. It is applied externally for eczema, wounds and burns, insect bites and stings and bluebottle stings.
It is also a styptic which means it stops bleeding. I will tell you a story about that. My husband, Walter, was one day clearing some alien bush with a group of labourers. They were far from the car, far from medical aid (± 30 km), when all of a sudden a branch snapped and struck our foreman in his mouth. He was bleeding profusely. Walter took a sour fig leaf and cut it lengthwise and stuck it on the wound. The bleeding stopped immediately. There was no need to go to a doctor and there were no further consequences. I don’t think any medicine would have worked better and certainly none would have been cheaper.
It is very encouraging to see children learn to use fynbos medicinal plants. My daughter, Nayna, lives on the farm with our three grandchildren, Eran,Timon and David. David, the youngest one, who is five years old, is especially interested in the plants. One day when he was still four years old, he picked some sour fig leaves and showed a visitor how to use it as he had just hurt himself falling.
I am also amazed how many people, who live in the fynbos area, have never picked a ripe sour fig fruit and sucked out the pips and juice. Many do not even know they are edible. I hope this article will change that. You either like it or you do not, but you will not know until you have tried it.
I had some correspondence from the Indigenous Plant Use Forum (IPUF) which stated that most of the plant uses in South Africa were developed overseas and that with the enormous plant variety we have in this country, so little is done to turn it into a sustainable development. There was a stage when the grape was also only a small, sour, little berry, and look today what has been developed: table grapes, raisins, wine... and my thoughts run wild: what if they did something to the sour figs that instead of trying to catch sour fig poachers, we had fields where people could work with sour figs four times the size?
For more recipes, see “Medicinal and other uses of Southern Overberg Fynbos Plants” or phone Mathia at (028) 3880073.
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