A table full of plants is not an unusual sight at Friends of Waters Meeting’s monthly meetings at Pike’s Post at the Ploughman in Bathurst. After all, Thicket (the biome) is at the heart of the Waters Meeting Reserve.
What was unexpected was that the table was at the entrance of the venue, with the audience of about 30 seated to face outwards. It was an intentional change of perspective, presenter Elizabeth Milne explained. While she spoke about specific plants and some of their documented healing properties, much of her talk – ‘Your garden, your pharmacy’ – emphasised the importance of first-hand knowledge.
The plants Milne had on her demonstration table were local – indigenous and endemic to Albany Thicket – and none of them with dangerous properties. In the context of the African knowledge system through which she had learnt about and used them, their effectiveness as treatment for a range of conditions depended on the user’s relationship with them.
To explain this, Milne walked her audience through different knowledge paradigms.
The Western “rational” approach had dominated science and medicine for more than a century, with the dictum, “a healthy mind in a healthy body” separating mind and body conceptually.
There was a less clear distinction between body and mind, or ‘spirit’, in Chinese traditional medicine, acupuncture and Ayurvedic medicine.
African traditional healing, on the other hand, recognised no real divide between the spiritual, mental and physical aspects of life and being.
With the caveat that it can be difficult to distinguish chancers from true healers, Milne said, “Science is not the only way of knowing, just as vision is not our only sense.”
Milne’s journey with plants and healing included a period under the tutelage of an igqirha (traditional healer). She told of the extraordinary experience of being instructed to “dream” her plant.
She’d woken up in the middle of the night with the Latin-based scientific name of a particular species of the Artemisia genus. Artemisia has more than 500 species, across Africa, but also South America, Asia, Europe and North America.
Artemisia was “her” plant, which she then read was widely used for its healing properties. Scientific documentation supports the effectiveness as a remedy of specific Artemisia species.
Among the plants on the table at Pike’s Post, to touch, feel and smell (and even stick a bit up your nostril if you wanted!) was Artemisia afra, or African wormwood. The Afrikaans name is wilde als and the isiXhosa name is umhlonyane. Locally, in Bathurst, umhlonyane is used with perdepis (Clausena anisata) to treat a range of conditions.
Also passed around for first-hand acquaintance were Olea europaea subsp cuspidata (formerly africana) – commonly known as wild olive, olienhout and umnquma. Its common association with peace and wisdom, continents and millennia apart, in ancient Greece and Africa, was striking, Milne noted. Locally it’s used in sacrificial ceremonies as a platter for meat, along with with Ptaeroxylon obliquum (sneezewood/ nieshout/ Mthathe).
Helichrysum petiolare and Helichrysum odoratissimum (curry bush/ liquorice plant/ kooigoed/ imphepho) is used as “a cleanser of body and soul and living spaces”. Medicinally, it was effective for coughs and colds, as well as tick bite fever. It’s also a good insect repellent.
Milne also passed around three plants used for healing wounds and stings and dressing burns – local species of aloe, bulbina and carpobrotus (vygies).
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- This article was first published in Talk of the Town, November 14, 2024. The newspaper serving the communities of Ndlambe and the Sunshine Coast, with a weekly wrap of Makhanda news, is available at stores from early on Thursdays.
