Haworthia - The Zebra Plant; A Cultural tale can grow in your back yard if you let it!
I always find myself imagining what stories plants would tell if they were able to speak, and although in many ways that seems to be an unrealistic expectation, however, when you go into the ethnobotanical road of plants, you will often find that many plants despite lack of speech do have a story of sorts worth sharing.
I was thinking about this today while I was having a look at some of my Haworthia fasciata plants - more commonly known in South Africa as the Zebra plant, and I remembered a fascinating thing I heard while working in Durban, KZN, South Africa.
While we were establishing the Nursery on that side, I remember working together with a Zulu lady in the succulent section of the nursery one day. At that stage the two of us had worked together quite a bit and we would often get to chatting about a wide variety of topics to pass the time while we worked. I enjoyed listening to the viewpoints that were very often so different and contrasting to my own as well as those of other cultures that I have become accustomed to. At some point that day, we were splitting and re-potting some haworthia plants that had produced saplings and as such outgrew the current pots that they were growing in.
"You know this plant is very special in our culture" She started.
Then she carried on telling me about their cultural beliefs regarding the Haworthia plants, and why the Zulu people held this specific plant in such high regard.
The Zulu people of Southern Africa, although for the most part very westernized as far as their way of life goes, tend to still hold very strongly onto a great deal of their tribal traditions as well as their cultural belief systems, and for them the haworthia plant holds great symbolism - it is a token of the masculine and the feminine as well as the unity of the two, more so this plant is considered a talisman of sorts that has the ability to increase fertility in couples that desire to have a baby..
In the Zulu culture, this plant would very often be gifted to a newly wed couples, with the belief that it would help them be fertile and that the couple will be blessed with the conception of a child, and as with many other African cultures, baring children into this world is a sign of wealth in its own rights. As such, this plant is not only used by newly wed couples, but also by couples who are struggling to conceive a child. In either case, the plant would be placed above the entrance of the couples bedroom door on the inside of the room the lady explained to me.
I always find these kind of stories fascinating despite the fact that I might not always see any logic in the beliefs that they might hold in such things, and the beauty and value in these amazingly resilient gorgeous little plants stems from a more pragmatic, nature loving stance for me personally, but as the saying goes: " Each to their own" I guess.
Above you can see some of the Haworthia plants well established in one of my succulent garden beds, where I can appreciate their hardy yet graceful appeal. But just for the sake of certainty, I have absolutely no intentions of hanging one above my bedroom door - None, Whatsoever... because as much as fate likes to be tempted, I would prefer if it wasn't done by me!
I hope that you found this short story about one of the Zulu peoples cultural beliefs as fascinating as I did, feel free to leave me your thoughts in a comment below - I am looking forward to hearing from, thank you in advance!