Mesembryanthemum tortuosum

Mesembryanthemum tortuosum, previously and sometimes still called Sceletium tortuosum, is in Afrikaans commonly known as kougoed (chew things) and in the extinct Khoi language as kanna.

West of Oudtshoorn, still in the Little Karoo, there is a municipality of picturesque, mountainous countryside known as Kannaland. The land of the kanna includes the towns of Calitzdorp and Ladismith, much farmland and pristine veld.

M. tortuosum was important to the Khoi people, some of the earliest inhabitants of the region. Chewing the plant helped against hunger or thirst, also to induce mind-altering effects of a more general kind. M. tortuosum has served as a traditional medicine in the treatment of colic, as a sedative taken as a tea, as an analgesic and local anaesthetic, for instance when a tooth from the lower jaw had to be extracted. And traditional healers have used this plant in the treatment of alcoholism.

All or some of these uses of the kanna bring an interesting perspective to the name Kannaland… the Little Karoo an ecotourism destination in its own right from the earliest days. Tobacco, alcohol and cannabis may have later replaced S. tortuosum, contributing to its current status in conservation as being of least concern.

Still, the plant is cultivated commercially these days. The reason admitted to, of course, has to be only its appeal as a garden subject (Van Wyk and Gericke, 2000; Smith, et al, 1998).