Chitchat
Waxing lyrical about Karoo bossies and their “language”
Do you drive through the Karoo as if it is a “necessary torment” to get to your destination, or do you speak bossietaal [the language of the Karoo vegetation]?
A friend recently asked: “What are these bossies you’re always going on about? Surely they’re something the gardener should eradicate?” She clearly doesn’t speak bossietaal.
On Vaaljasfontein, our family farm outside Venterstad, where I spent all my school holidays, you get up early in the morning to just walk in the veld. These shrubs give a unique snap under your hiking boots, giving texture and dimension to the walk. That snap also releases crazy scents that remind you of earlymorning coffee on the stoep in years gone by, the rhythmic chingching of the cream separator and the dairy cows’ soft lowing.
Ankerbossie, guarri bush, voëltjiekanniesitnie [bird can’t sit here] – as rich and poetic as the plants’ common names, so are the scents of these undiscovered treasures.
An agricultural expert from Middelburg tells me the fragrances of the Karoo shrubs vary depending on the rain, season, region and the bush’s own “attitude”. Even the famous Karoo lambs whose meat owes its distinctive taste to the Karoo vegetation don’t always eat the same plants and, at certain times of the year, milk from cows who grazed on Karoo shrubs can make novices stagger at the taste. I’ve heard even the sparrows are choosy when picking which fragrant shrub will be material for their nests. Just imagine: a permanent room freshener that also keeps away fleas and lice.
It is this typical Karoo peculiarity that my codirector, Ian GossRoss, and I wanted to acknowledge when we started our enterprise Great Karoo Spirit. I am a pharmacist, and I did a weeklong course in distillation a year or so ago with the idea of making essential oils, but I got hooked by gin, whisky and rum. Our first two products in which my beloved Karoo plants are immortalised are finally for sale: Bossieveld Gin Inspiration and Mystique.
Many of the Karoo’s aromatic plants, such as cancer bush, sewedaegeneesbossie, gansogies, kougoed, African wormwood and kriebos, also have healing properties and contain magical ingredients like terpenoids and sesquiterpene, some of which are found only in Karoo plants. The Khoi used silver everlasting for bedding that protected them from bugs and, today, its essential oil is a soughtafter export product with the same characteristics as tea tree oil.
Riëtte Griesel, coowner of Garingboom Guest Farm ( garingboom.co.za) near Bethulie, is a fluent Karoospeaker and has laid out a hiking trail with signposts for all the plants on their sheep farm, Cyferfontein. If you’re a layman in Karoospeak, this trail is an excellent starting point.
Bossietaal is also about kicking off your shoes and relaxing. I came across a shrub called Bushman’s tea that indeed makes a lovely tea when infused. However, Marene van der Walt from Morning Glory Cottages ( morningglory cottages.co.za) on the farm Gelykfontein in the Venterstad district used a different shrub to make me some Bushman’s tea.
In Cradock I heard of a plant that was used to brew “Bushman beer”, but nobody could help me with the name of that plant. Sue MiltonDean of RenuKaroo in Prince Albert told me about a succulent (I think it is known as gansmis)