Prionium serratum, a famine food

GB Shaw’s statement "There is no love sincerer than the love of food" resonates with Maslow’s “Man lives by bread alone when there is no bread” that originated in different form and context in the New Testament.

Prionium serratum has been described as a food of last resort, one that people will seek once the tastier and preferred supplies run out and famine is at the door. The roots of this plant are eaten in the Okavango swamps where the plant also grows, mostly when the cereal crops have failed. Pounding the roots and discarding the fibres yield a pulp that is turned into a porridge with the skill growing from experience.

Early coastal hunter-gatherers of southern Africa may sometimes have survived on the plentiful young flower shoots or the soft insides of stem tips of P. serratum found growing along the rivers.

Even today’s affluent may sometimes wonder what foodstuffs they will access from the environment when push comes to shove. The social order might then reverse their status, putting them last, behind today’s poorest of the poor who are still honing those skills (Fox and Norwood Young, 1982; Wikipedia).