Yarn Part Three, November 2025

In the first part of the devil’s claw story that follows, I begin by providing the context of the project I was working on, a summary of its aims, and a description of the plant itself. Among the crafted notes, I drop in two rough sketches which I drew in the field, to illustrate the dynamics of relations as I perceived them then. From there, I go on to consider my relationships with people and plants in my study area and reflect on how this project has influenced my approach and attitude to ethnobotanical studies.

The overall aim of the devil’s claw research project was to assess whether or not a small, Zambian-based, organic products company – Kalahari Biocare – could reasonably and sustainably establish on-the-ground marketing associations to supply it with minimally processed, traceable, organic devil’s claw roots.

Kalahari Biocare would trade with the local harvesters through the associations, bringing a source of income to families who lived far from employment opportunities, and would then export it as organically certified devil’s claw which would be turned into ‘clean’ herbal medicines by reputable companies, such as Aboca in northern Italy.

This was in contrast with the unregulated trade that was creeping into Zambia’s villages, with cross-border traders arriving at nighttime with large trucks to haul sacks of devil’s claw south to Namibia, paying the local farmers - who dug up the treasure - with maize meal and sugar: exploitative, illegal, and unsustainable.

My research was funded by humanitarian organisations whose aim was to support rural livelihoods, particularly those of women seeking finance to send their children to school and establish other small businesses.

Two species of Harpagophytum (both known as devil’s claw) can be found in southern Africa, widely distributed in Namibia in particular, with a well-established export chain connecting these medicinal plants of Kalahari Sands vegetation with the countries of Europe and beyond, where devil’s claw roots are further processed and manufactured into a range of herbal products.

As many areas in Namibia have become exhausted through decades of unsustainable harvesting, alternative sources have been sought by local traders to satisfy the demand overseas. One species, Harpagophytum zeyheri, known locally as Seto, grows in southwestern Zambia, which connects with Namibia along a stretch of the Zambezi River. Zambia had not been part of the supply chain until there was pressure on traders to look for fresh territory.

The name, devil’s claw, refers to the grapple-like hooks which extend out from the edges of the plants’ seed capsules - but this is not the medicinal part.

The perennial plant lives mostly underground, with a ‘mother’ root constituting its main body. This is a swollen, upright tuber-like structure which, when the rain comes, brings forth above ground long, thin, leafy stems which extend over the surface of the soil. Later in the season, pink flowers appear among the fresh leaves and, if fertilised, these develop into large, woody, spiny seed capsules which can catch on to the feet or hooves of passing animals and travel some distance before disintegrating and releasing the seeds.

Year by year, the mother root produces strings of secondary roots which radiate out through the sandy soil, expanding the plant’s reach and building up stores of food during the wet summer to support future growth and for sustenance in the dry winter months. Each of these secondary roots, or ‘tubers’ as they are known informally, grows longer and bulkier over the years, if left to develop without disturbance.

These swollen roots are the source of medicinal compounds known in Western science as glycosides, which are effective in the treatment of different forms of arthritis and other inflammatory conditions, and have pain-relieving properties. One of the biggest markets for devil’s claw medicines is veterinary medicine, especially in treating horses.

As pressure comes to dig up more Seto for export, even the skinny and short secondary roots are now being harvested and – disastrously – the mother roots are being extracted.

An arc of pain (Fig. 1) now connects the countries where devil’s claw can be found and those which import it: pain is caused in the lands where it is dug up – loss of traditional sources of medicines, damage to the fields, exploitation of local labour; whereas pain is relieved in the people and animals who consume the manufactured treatments (mostly) overseas.

Figure 1. arc of pain

Asking questions

Subsistence farmers in the communities I visited for my fieldwork knew that, to sustain their sources of Seto, the mother plant should be left to grow and produce more side roots which would, in time, swell, and provide traditional healers with their source of medicines.

In my first venture into the villages and fields where Seto could be found, I went with clear questions, to establish at the outset if this had the potential to be a suitable area for further studies of abundance of the plant and local harvesting practices. Such questions as,

What ailments does Seto treat?

Have you ever taken it?

Does it work?

Who prepares the medicine for you?

Where does it grow?

Can you take me there?

I was always accompanied by a capable assistant, Boyd, with whom I had worked on previous fieldtrips, and who was fluent in English as well as SiLozi, and several other Zambian languages.

Sometimes I caught Boyd’s gesture or facial expression which told me that he was uncomfortable translating my questions, and later we would chat about this around the campfire, often ending up in laughter about my blunt approach and lack of cultural understanding.

The most puzzling thing for me, in those early days, was how many different answers I received in response to my query about the uses of devil’s claw. Now, having learned about ‘redundancies’ in the potential for one plant to heal - that is, abundance of forms of action, not all of which are expressed at one time in one particular set of circumstances - now that I am aware of this phenomenon, I understand how devil’s claw can offer multiple manifestations of pain relief.

My report concluded that Kalahari Biocare’s small-scale operation would be sustainable and enriching for the association members involved – with the proviso that community leaders committed to undergoing training in sustainable harvesting methods and put in place monitoring procedures.

That became my next project, whose story belongs in another book.

Walking this way

Reflecting now, across the years, on my adventures in the field, I find it astonishing that I was capable of such feats: driving for hundreds of kilometres through sandy woodlands and visiting traditional villages, camping with minimal water and basic foodstuffs, and gathering around me groups of people with whom I had no shared language to set out survey plots and gather samples and measurements.

In these projects, I had no ambition to be a published ethnobotanist: I just wanted to do the work and contribute to the sustainable harvesting of a unique plant to relieve pain and suffering.

Figure 2. north-south: outcomes of harvesting devil’s claw

I sketched this picture (Fig. 2) in the field as I contemplated the potential for harm – as well as good - that the search for plant medicines world-wide can have on people’s wellbeing and livelihoods. Would I continue to buy herbal medicine in Scotland if the ingredients were sourced from other people’s lands, now that I had witnessed the possible consequences?

At this stage, I had already completed my Masters in Holistic Science and was practising Goethean science, which meant paying close and prolonged attention to the plants while examining what preconceptions I had of them, doing my best to observe through unbiased eyes.

I waited for a moment when I could be on my own (with no other human beings) among a patch of devil’s claw plants and asked them for their response to the matter of over-harvesting. Were they at risk? Would they disappear completely from this land?

The answer I intuited was that they would retreat, would withdraw to the edges of the land where they could survive and conserve their resources. They would become unseen, invisible, undetectable for a while. They would let the people forget them.

As I reflect on my experience of remembering these scenes from my fieldwork, I can appreciate more fully that there is much more to the work of ethnobotany than recording facts from the field and writing up findings. By participating in these and other similar projects, I have become a more rounded human being, a more culturally aware person, and more open to the world of plants.

Reflecting on the gaps, on the years that have passed since moving from Zambia to Scotland, on the gaps in language and culture, and on the gaps between fieldwork and findings: I say, let them be. Let the gaps hold a winter store of memories, and a spring of new ideas and understandings.