ture as the Khoikhoi were dependent on the
plants as sources of sustenance for themselves and their animals. As the younger
generation of colonists learned to speak the
languages of the Bushmen and Khoikhoi,
their lore was preserved and assimilated in
the “Cape Dutch” and English names for
plants.
The Western Cape districts and the Namaqualand-Richtersveld-Bushmanland terrain
have retained a great deal of tribal lore
through vernacular nomenclature. Some of
the Khoikhoi names of common edible veld
plants (“veldkos”) include: “baroe”, “kanna”,
“kambroo” and “ghaap”. How the plants
were used by the Khoikhoi as well as the col-
onists, were recorded together with the local
vernacular names by some of the foremost
European botanical collectors (Thunberg,
Masson, Sparrmann, Paterson and Burchell)
during the period 1770 to 1850. Common
names of plants recorded by these collectors
were considered of so much importance that
these names were incorporated in the botanical names.
The radical change in the occupation of
some of the colonists - from agriculturists to
stock farmers - and their migration into the
interior, especially during the period of 1700
to 1800, had a major influence on the development of vernacular names. It is possible
that the frustration of an agriculturist in-