South Africa's colonial past has shaped its environmental history, including introductions of alien plants. Indentured Indian labourers, mainly from Tamil Nadu, that were brought to South Africa in the 1860s, acquired knowledge of Zulu healing practices and plants. This translocation of traditional medical knowledge (mostly Ayurvedic), and the adoption of new plants and traditions of practice, led to these migrants opening up some of the first muthi (traditional medicine) shops in South Africa, and also to importing and incorporating Indian medicinal plants within South African healing traditions. Given this role of traditional medicine in the introduction of alien plant taxa, we gathered data on them from published literature (including market surveys) and from a survey of 77 muthi outlets in three South African cities. There were 301 alien taxa from 76 families, of which 81 taxa were recorded in trade. Sixty-nine of the traded taxa were identified to species, of which 20 have a declared legal status requiring some form of control. Of the 81 traded taxa, 44% were sold in a non-viable form and 29% were seeds or fruit that could be germinated; the remaining 28% were sold as live plants. Seeds of these alien taxa constituted the greatest quantity and most widely traded plant part of the taxa recorded. The survey of muthi outlets generated 36 alien plant taxa, of which 26 were new records in the trade. Plant origins recorded in this survey revealed that 41% of plants were harvested in South Africa, 35% imported from India, and 24% were of unknown origin. The importance of this trade as a pathway for introduction of alien species is discussed.
This dataset is a an inventory of 475 alien plant taxa (447 identified to species), including a photo-guide to 96 plants, mostly sold as traditional medicines in three South African cities by traders of South African, West African, East African, Indian and Chinese origin (Williams et al., 2021). The dataset also incorporates species documented in a literature survey of alien plants used for traditional medicines in South Africa. The species inventory is a consolidation of the data from two separate investigations of 106 medicinal plant traders: firstly, a study conducted in 2010/2011 of 77 traders in markets and shops in Johannesburg, Pretoria and Durban (Williams et al., 2021); and secondly, a study conducted in 2017/2018 of plants sold by 29 (im)migrant traders of West African, East African, and Indian origin in Johannesburg, and of alien species listed in a TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) catalogue (Burness, 2019). Accompanying each plant photograph in the photo-guide is the following information: species name; common name(s) provided by the survey respondents; invasive alien plant category; introduction status; voucher specimen number(s); nationality of the medicine traders; and, notes on source localities (e.g. imported or collected in southern Africa). Overall, most of the taxa were from the Asteraceae (12%), Fabaceae (9%) and Poaceae (5%). The species are mostly unlisted (76%) with respect to their legal status in South Africa in terms of the National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act (NEM:BA), 2004 Alien & Invasive Species (A&IS) regulations. The most frequently recorded species in the various surveys were
Glycyrrhiza glabra, Acorus calamus, Angelica sinensis
and
Zingiber officinale.
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