Zeekoevlei #6: Cool Creeper!
The cache, a small flip-topped tablet pot, is hidden at the northern end of the recreation area alongside the eastern edge of Zeekoevlei in this section of the False Bay Nature Reserve.
For information on Zeekoevlei Nature Reserve including access waypoints, see GC5EWW2 Zeekoevlei #1: Cool Place.
The whole area around the cache location is covered in a thick layer of a cool, curative but contentious (it often spreads invasively) Cape creeper . . . the Sour Fig (Carpobrotus edulis) which is a native, mat-forming, ground-creeping plant with succulent leaves.
It may be confused with the closely related and similar Elands Sourfig (Carpobrotus acinaciformis left below) and Sea Fig (Carpobrotus chilensis right below) with which it may grow alongside and hybridise) however these have a magenta-purple flowers and slightly different flower sizes and parts. For example, in the Gallery the purple flowers were all identified as C edulis on the source web page. However, the uses of the 3 species are the same.
See here for background info on this remarkable plant which has many uses . . .
Being edible, the ripe fruit are gathered – sometime available from road-side stalls near the coast - and either eaten fresh or made into a very tart jam.
It has numerous home-remedy and traditional medicine uses. The leaf juice is astringent and mildly antiseptic. It is mixed with water and swallowed to treat diarrhoea, dysentery and stomach cramps, and is used as a gargle to relieve laryngitis, sore throat and mouth infections. Chewing a leaf tip and swallowing the juice is enough to ease a sore throat. Leaf juice or a crushed leaf is a popular soothing cure for insect stings -being a coastal plant it is luckily often on hand in times of such emergencies.
The antiseptic leaf juice (sap) is used as a soothing lotion for burns, bruises, scrapes, cuts, grazes and sunburn, ringworm, eczema, dermatitis, sunburn, herpes, nappy rash, thrush, cold sores, cracked lips, chafing, skin conditions and allergies.
Syrup made from the fruit is said to have laxative properties. A mixture of leaf juice, honey and olive oil in water is an old remedy for TB. The leaf juice also relieves the itch from mosquito, tick and spider bites.
The Khoikhoi took an infusion of the fruits during pregnancy to ensure a strong, healthy baby and an easy birth and smeared leaf sap over the head of a new-born child to make it nimble and strong. In the Eastern Cape it is also used to treat diabetes and diptheria.
It is frequently cultivated as a sand binder, groundcover, dune and embankment stabilizer, and fire-resistant barrier and also a superb water-wise plant.
See here for a comprehensive scientific review of the plant’s therapeutic properties and nutritional potential. The review concludes . . .
‘An extensive literature search was done to reveal its important ethnopharmacological, phytochemical, and biological properties as well as its nutritional value. From this it is clear that it has been an important source of traditional medicines for decades, especially for the management of tuberculosis and other respiratory infections, toothaches and earaches, facial eczema, wounds and burns, hypertension, and diabetes mellitus, among others.
Some of its ethnomedicinal uses have been scientifically validated and pharmacological activities such as antimicrobial, anti-proliferative, antioxidant, neuroprotective, anti-inflammatory, and antidiabetic activities have also been studied.
Non-therapeutic uses including its nutritional use were also highlighted. It is hoped that this review will elicit renewed research interests in this valuable medicinal plant with the overall aim of repositioning and expanding its uses from its predominantly ornamental and environmental management role to evidence-based phytotherapeutic uses through scientific studies aimed at validating its folkloric medicinal and therapeutic efficacy for drug discovery and development purposes.
Hitherto, only limited in vitro scientific studies have been reported, hence more scientific validation studies are necessary in the form of toxicological and pharmacological profiling of Carpobrotus edulis in more in vitro and
animal models, as a prelude for human investigations through clinical trials’.
