BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATA SHEET

In Winter (June-July) roots of Boscia albitrunca or Grewia flava are ground,
roasted, boiled, and prepared as coffee substitutes. Miscellaneous wild
plants include mushrooms (collected usually in February) and vegetable fibers
chewed to alleviate thirst (generally from Acacia grandicornuta, A. karroo, or
A. tortilis), while resins are obtained from more than twenty species and
used as snacks by all Tlokwa. Dietary use of flowers is primarily restricted
to Tlokwa children who use blooms from Aloe zebrina (Grivetti, 1976; 1978; 1979).
When one compares lists of edible wild plants used by the Tlokwa with
lists presented earlier on wild plants as food for Bushman or other hunter­
gatherer societies (Tables 3 and 6) one is struck with a basic paradox; the
Tlokwa, so-called agro-pastoralists, regularly utilize many more wild foods
than hunter-gatherers (Table 31). Close inspection of anthropological and
botanical data from southern Africa, however, reveals that the Tlokwa are not
an anomaly, but are typical of other agro-pastoral societies; peoples who
maintain a strong basic agricultural/animal economic base, but who also pract­
!Le hunting-collecting. Furthermore, the Tlokwa are not unique among the
Tswana agro-pastoralists since Scroggie (1946) working among the Tswana
Ngwaketse, also identified a strong theme of hunting and collecting of wild
plants as food.
The present author (Grivetti, 1979, p. 252) reported that dietary diversi­
fication is important to maintain nutritional quality of diet. Societies with
diversification will be more successful during periods of climatic-environmental
stress (drought) than societies with limited food procurement strategies. Indeed,
it is this writer's view that the principal factor contributing to Tswana nutri­
tional success reported by Burgess (1972) at the peak of drought in the Kalahari,
62.