Abstract
There have been many invaluable contributions to our knowledge of food plants of southern Africa, with the most comprehensive of these being the book Food from the veld by Fox and Norwood Young in 1982. This work is, however, not only outdated, it is also incomplete and not exclusively representative of the southern African flora. There is also no indication of how many of the southern African plant species are actually edible. Of all the literature available on the food plants of southern Africa, there are none that present the patterns of plant use and preferences in the region or in the language groups distributed within the region. There is also, therefore, no indication whether cross-cultural food plant selection in southern Africa is best explained by language ancestry, floristic environment or subsistence strategy. The availability of a comprehensive inventory of the food plants of southern Africa has value beyond the scope of ethnobotany, and can reveal many novel patterns within this subject. ..
Ph.D. (Botany)