oon after the first decent winter rains in the Sandveld and Namakwaland, you can start looking out for slim green shoots pushing up through the grass, sorrel, and reeds. This is ( or ), an ancient that belongs to the cattail family. The Khoi and San, as well as the and , depended on the veld for a lot of their food. Over the years, many of these wild foods, like sorrel, and , made it to our ancestors’ tables. has handfuls of nicknames: wild asparagus, poor man’s asparagus, , Strandveld , and , to name a few. It is a smaller plant with grows in sandy soil, so their shoots are longer and thinner than the Namakwaland that pushes its thicker shoots up out of the clay it grows in. Sandveld often grows among the reeds – where animals can’t reach it – and that’s why they have longer asparagus-like shoots. It differs from year to year and depends on the rain, but the best time to harvest is around the end of July or early August,” says Jap Hickman, a retired farmer born and bred in the area. “While the Sandveld and Namakwaland are better known for than other regions, you also find it in places in the Swartland, Overberg, West Coast, Breedekloof, and even up in the Northern Cape and Namibia.”
