Copyright © 2000 Reuters Limited
September 1, 2000

CAPE TOWN, Sept 1 (Reuters) - An obscure South African plant credited with curing almost anything from hangovers to boils is in danger of extinction because of soaring demand from Europe and the United States and lack of effective protection at home.

The demand for oil and leaves from the round leafed buchu plant -- known for its medicinal properties since the time of the native Khoi bushmen -- has inflated prices and prompted a surge in illegal or ill-managed cropping.

``It is going to destroy the plant either through over-harvesting or hybridisation,'' Cobus Coetzee, a scientist at the South African Agricultural Research Council, told Reuters.

He said the fate of the Agathosma Butulina plant was inextricably linked to the general plundering of the Western Cape's rich floral heritage.

Cape Nature Conservation officer Mossie Basson said poachers could collect up to 100 kilos (220 lbs) of buchu plant material in a day for which they would be paid up to 2,000 rand ($288).

``The trouble is the poachers work mostly at night and very hurriedly. Instead of cutting the plant and letting it regrow, they uproot it and kill it,'' he said.

Extracts from the buchu plant, a member of the citrus family, have been used for centuries by the bushmen to cure blood and intestinal disorders as well as help heal wounds from battle. There are even indications it might help racehorses run faster.

The early Dutch and British colonists noted the plant's miraculous properties and adapted it to their own use, steeping it in brandy and vinegar for internal and external use.

Bales of buchu leaves were even listed on the cargo manifest of the Titanic on its doomed maiden voyage across the Atlantic.

``It is a stimulant, useful for hangovers...colds, flu, coughs, rheumatism and gout,'' according to Ben-Erik van Wyk and Nigel Gericke in their book ``People's Plants.''

But that is by no means the only source of demand for the shrub that originates in the arid mountains of the Cape.

The rich industrialised world's focus on processed foods has been a major source of rising demand for buchu oil, which is used like salt as a flavour enhancer but without any of the negative effects of sodium chloride.

HIGH PRICES CAUSE POACHING

Earle Graven, a botanist who founded his Grass Roots company a decade ago to process and add value to raw plant material, said it took on average a tonne of buchu leaves and stalks to produce one kilo of oil.

He said the price paid to a picker had jumped during that time from about 50 cents a kilo of plant material to between 18 and 22 rand.

``Buchu goes in cycles. It has become expensive at the moment,'' he told Reuters. ``The market is worth about 10 to 12 million rand a year.''

The high prices have led to a surge in poaching of the protected plant which thrives on often inaccessible, south-facing mountain slopes in the Cape.

It has also triggered a burst of cultivation of buchu which Coetzee said had led to planting of the perennial plants outside their usual territory and caused hybridisation.

``We have to maintain pure genetic material for the future,'' he said. ``Hybridisation has already occurred, and hybrids are infertile.''

Rediscovery of herbal remedies by the pharmaceutical industry has further fuelled demand for buchu along with a whole range of other medicinal plants including devil's claw which is used to treat arthritis.

Coetzee estimated that world trade in natural plant-based pharmaceuticals was worth about $120 billion a year.

The U.S. food and pharmaceutical industries, aware of the threat to wild plants from over exploitation, insist on buying only cultivated material.

Coetzee said this was praiseworthy but unfortunately it exacerbated the complication of hybridisation.

The problem is further fuelled by a belief among some of South Africa's foremost herbalists -- the Rastafarians -- that cultivated material has lost its medicinal efficacy.

They refuse to use farmed material.

But for Basson and Coetzee the fate of buchu is, while lamentable, simply an indicator of the wholesale destruction of South Africa's rich treasure house of plants.

COLONIAL PLUNDERERS STRIPPED SOUTH AFRICA

``A study in 1975 showed that 60 percent of the Cape floral kingdom had been destroyed in the previous 150 years,'' Basson said. ``I calculate we have less than one third left and the pressures on it are extreme.''

``It happened in Mexico and it is happening here. We are the last outpost,'' he added.

For Coetzee the issue goes back to colonial times when the incoming plunderers operated in the absolute belief that they owned what they saw and could do with it as they wished.

This proprietorial attitude applied as much to the indigenous people as to the local flora and fauna, he said.

``This was the case up to the Rio Convention in 1992 which gave recognition for the first time to the principle that a country owned its own species,'' he said.

Coetzee noted that many of the Cape's exclusive plant species such as the coveted protea -- South Africa's national flower -- were now being widely grown outside the country in the Netherlands, Israel and Hawaii.

``A general statement can be made that the Netherlands earns more from South African flowers than South Africa earns from its gold,'' he said.

``South Africa has already lost control of many of its flower species, and other people are making the money we should be from them. Unless we do something to protect it the same will happen to the plant genetic material,'' he added.

He said there were 13,000 plant species indigenous to South Africa. Many are unique and all need protection.

More than 3,000 people were employed in the country's flower industry and the same number again in the medicinal plant business -- with exports of indigenous flowers alone worth some $15 million a year, he said.

``You could employ double the number of people and multiply by 10 the income if we could develop the indigenous crop effectively,'' Coetzee said.

``We have already lost the battle on floriculture. Unless we get our act together now, the same will happen to our medicinal plants,'' he added. Error: Unable to read footer file.