Plants as Food

Although the main constituent of the Soqotran pastoralist diet is buttermilk and other milk products, nevertheless the island's vegetation is an important food resource, providing a valuable nutritional supplement to an otherwise rather restricted diet, and indeed becomes crucial in periods of drought when there is little or no milk . At such times the Soqotrans fall back on the remarkable variety of wild foods which grow around them.

The nutritious fruits of Ziziphus are gathered from where they have fallen or are knocked from the trees with staves: they are eaten fresh or are ground into a coarse meal that keeps well. The large fruit of Sterculia are collected and their sizeable kernels extracted. If black, they are fully ripe and can be eaten at once, whereas if pale and immature, they must be taken and cooked slowly in the hot ash beside the fire before being ground up. The sour but refreshing fruit of the wild orange are picked and eaten, or their juice squeezed directly onto the staple cereal dish, or made into a cooling drink especially popular during the thirsty days of Ramadhan. The leaves too can be collected and added to tea to impart a delicate lemony flavour and fragrance. The tamarind tree (Tamarindus indica) offers vitamin-rich fruit which are very popular: as well as being eaten raw or made into a rather tart drink, the fruit can be crushed, added to a little water with some salt and cooked down to a paste which is added to the milk skin as a butter starter. When the fruit have become overripe and too hard to crack open with the teeth, they are roasted at the edge of the fire until the outer casing cracks and the kernels can be extracted and ground into a nutty meal which is used as a cereal substitute. The fruits of the wild fig (Ficus) are eaten either at the green stage, when they are small and astringent, or are left to ripen and redden, but in that case the gatherer has to compete with enthusiastic birds and insects for the fruit. They are eaten fresh or are sun-dried for later consumption. Rhus bushes produce a spray of tiny berries which are sour when green but become sweeter as they ripen. They are sometimes roasted over the fire to make a sort of miniature popcorn. Cordia trees produce small orange and extraordinarily viscid fruit which are disliked by some, who say that they damage the throat and tonsils. Commiphora ornifolia trees offer bunches of green, grape-like fruit which are sour and astringent, and are often, indeed, given to the sickly as a restorative tonic.

A variety of tubers, corms, bulbs and rootstock are dug up for food. The small bulbs of the Romulia with its vivid, blue, star-shaped flowers are usually eaten raw when fresh, as they disintegrate into a disagreeable slime when cooked. Those of Boerhavia are eaten raw, and the bulbs of Habenaria either raw or roasted. The large tuber of Dioscorea is dug up: this is an important famine food: after cooking with a little water and salt under a layer of, preferably, Diciitaria grass, it can be pounded to a paste which is dried and used as a cereal susbsitute.

Smaller plants also offer food, such as Glossonema its softly prickled fruit with their taste of new-shelled peas; the growing tips and fruit of Caralluma; the bitter'fingers'of Echidnopsis; the succulent stem, leaves, flowers and fruit of Ceropegia. Many green herbs too can be gathered to be eaten raw or cooked as a relish: Amaranthus, for example, is very nutritious and after the lightest shower comes up in profusion around settlements; species of Oxalis, Talinum, Portulaca, Rhynchosia, Corchorus and many others can be collected, or simply provide a serendipitous nibble for the passerby. Sweeter treats are to be had : the shrub Bellochia, which grows in most areas of the island, produces a profusion of orange, yellow and red flowers at the base of each lurks a droplet of delicious nectar to be extracted.