Academic literature on the topic 'Plant invasion – South Africa – Limpopo'

The knowledge pertaining to uses of indigenous wild plants and their conservation methods by the rural communities of the Limpopo Province (South Africa) is not fully reconnoitered. The available data highlighting these aspects are scattered in general ethnobotanical literatures. The current study therefore sought to collate, analyze, and describe such information. Search engines and local libraries were used to document information. A total of 50 useful wild plant species belonging to 32 botanical families, mainly the Fabaceae (28%, n = 9) and Cucurbitaceae (13%, n = 4), were harvested by rural communities inhabiting the Limpopo Province. These species were mainly exploited wholly for medicinal (62%, n = 31) and food (20%, n = 10) purposes. Leaves, bark, fruits, and roots, respectively, were the most commonly used plant parts. Overall, the traditional conservation approaches employed by the indigenous people to ensure continual supply of these organs for different livelihoods encompasses traditional beliefs and taboos, sustainable harvesting practices as well as domestication of plants. However, not all these approaches promote effective conservation and sustainable utilization of wild plant resources.

Reliance on traditional plant-derived medicine motivated the World Health Organization recommendation to improve, regulate, and integrate it into the primary healthcare model to offer affordable, reliable, and community-specific primary healthcare. The objective of this chapter was to describe the uses of medicinal plants in traditional medicine to meet the healthcare needs of the members of a rural community in Limpopo Province, South Africa. Structured interviews conducted with 164 participants give evidence of the use of indigenous plant-derived medicine to meet the healthcare needs. This type of healthcare correlates with the World Health Organization primary healthcare, which emphasizes health promotion through curative and preventive care. The study results also present evidence of indigenous knowledge of medicinal plant conservation practices, which embrace observance of cultural taboos and following the prescribed methods of harvesting the plant materials.

Plant communities of the Jornada Basin are characteristic of the northern Chihuahuan Desert both in structure and dynamics. Although a number of plant communities can be differentiated, five major vegetation types are often distinguished that differ in plant species cover and composition, as well as other factors, such as animal populations, soil properties, and elevation. These five types are black grama (Bouteloua eriopoda) grasslands, playa grasslands, tarbush (Flourensia cernua) shrublands, creosotebush (Larrea tridentata) shrublands, and mesquite (Prosopis grandulosa) shrublands. Similar to many other parts of the Chihuahuan Desert, these plant communities have experienced major shifts in vegetation composition over the past 50–150 years (York and Dick-Peddie 1969). The most dramatic changes in vegetation and associated ecosystem processes have occurred as a result of a shift in life form due to woody plant encroachment into perennial grasslands (Grover and Musick 1990; Bahre and Shelton 1993). This encroachment of shrubs has occurred in many arid and semiarid regions of the world, including the Western United States, northern Mexico, southern Africa, South America, New Zealand, and Australia (McPherson 1997; Scholes and Archer 1997). A number of drivers have been implicated in these grass–shrub dynamics, including various combinations of livestock grazing, small animal activity, drought, changes in fire regime, and changes in climate (Humphrey 1958; Archer 1989; Allred 1996; Reynolds et al. 1997; Van Auken 2000). The causes of shrub invasion are quite variable and often poorly understood, although the consequences consistently lead to the process of desertification (Schlesinger et al. 1990). This chapter describes the characteristics of each vegetation type and the documented changes in each type at the Jornada Basin. We then discuss the key drivers influencing these dynamics. Vegetation in the Chihuahuan Desert region has been classified as desert-grassland transition (Shreve 1917), desert savanna (Shantz and Zon 1924), desert plains grasslands (Clements 1920), desert shrub grassland (Darrow 1944), and shrubsteppe (Kuchler 1964). Desert grassland is often used as a general descriptive name for the area (McClaran 1995), although landscapes at the Jornada and throughout the northern Chihuahuan Desert often consist of a mosaic of desert grasslands, Chihuahuan Desert shrublands, and plains-mesa sand scrub (Dick-Peddie 1993).