Intro to this blog

2 April 2020

Day 7 of National Lock Down, Day 17 of Personal Self-Isolation

I used to be a social (media) pariah. My brother in-law convinced me to try Instagram after having to endure being a guinea pig of my wild food experiments at home (Thank you Awie). That was in August 2016 at the beginning of my PhD journey. Since then many people have suggested (And I also thought) my content would be better suited in a blog: long format pieces with lots of photos.

Despite this I was reluctant to start a blog because;

A: I was trying to finish an 80 000 word thesis and writing wasn’t really for pleasure (but jay it is done!).

B: Everyone (and their mom) seems to think they have a blog worthy life. Sometimes I really cringe at food blogs and scroll past pages of writing of how Susan discovered Sumac in Greece (as I type this I realise this paragraph is exactly what I cringe at most).

C: I didn’t know what the message of the blog would be. I have been kind off flailing around for the past 6 years trying different things and I am afraid my topics of interest have not become more clarified as I had hoped.

BUT! The recent lock down has forced my hand to publish this blog, partly to aid the maintenance of my mental health (and maybe yours too). Most importantly though the Covid-19 pandemic has made me realise that life is short (Susan, stop sneaking into my posts). I am never going to be the super refined Ted Talker I imagine I will become. So I hope you will humour me and be a part of my (hopefully positive) progression through my journey of writing, cooking, gardening, photographing INFORMALLY. I have made the conscious choice that this blog does not have to be as polished and perfect as I imagined it should be. This blog in itself, is part of my training (or de-training from Academia) for conveying my work in the real life, Post PhD!

So, feel free to scroll past my Susan-esque personal epiphanies, but I promise I will try and give useful, practical tips in every post, or at the very least beautiful and interesting articles on indigenous plants and ancient life before “civilisation”.

PS: Being a recovering academic, I am VERY accustomed to constructive criticism, so gooi them my way and I will try and improve this platform (where I see fit, this is an autocracy after all).

So what is this blog about?

I am Elzanne Singels, a botanist and

archaeologist living in Cape Town, South Africa. I look at plants through the lens of how humans evolved alongside them. My research focus is on the hyperdiverse flora of the Cape Floristic Region, a floral kingdom at the south-western tip of Africa.

This region contains an astounding number of plant species that occur nowhere else in the world (endemic). In fact, the Cape Floristic Region (CFR) has one of the highest rates of endemism (68%) in the world. Alongside this, utterly unique and diverse flora is one of the most complete and extensive archaeological records of continued human occupation of this region throughout the course of human evolution. Recent research suggests that ancient humans were able to survive in this region when most of Africa was completely uninhabitable.

The plants in the Cape Floristic Region were critical to ensuring the survival and eventual evolution of our species, and this is the fundamental fact that fuels my passion for the hyperdiverse, beautiful and even tasty flora of the region I call home. The combination of unique flora and unique human history (Endemic) in this region (Cape) is the inspiration for this blog (and its namesake): Endemic Cape.

My academic background:

I studied Conservation Ecology at Stellenbosch University focusing on plant conservation. I then entered the world of Palaeo(old) -ethno(people) -botany(plants) and started research on which plants ancient humans foraged and ate. This was the primary focus of my Masters and later PhD research. I am on the cusp of submitting my PhD in Archaeology at the University of Cape Town for examination.

My PhD research focused on the impact a specific group of plants, geo(earth) -phytes(plants) (plants with underground storage organs: think potatoes, onions etc.) could have had on the evolution of early modern humans. More on that later.

My current work:

I am passionate about learning from humans' past relationship with plants to learn how we can have a more fair and sustainable food system in the future. I currently work as an environmental consultant in the Agri sector, helping companies implement sustainable, ethical agricultural reform to lessen the negative environmental impact of the agricultural sector while distributing the income generated by this activity more fairly along the value chain.

Throughout my studies, I have tried to stay active in plant conservation. I have been involved in various vegetation rehabilitation projects in Cape Town, advising on rehabilitation methodologies and propagating endangered, endemic plants that have been planted out into the wild.

What to expect from this blog:

These three main areas of my work really define the content of this blog (Palaeo-ethnobotany, Sustainable Food Systems and Conservation): I live, eat, sleep indigenous plants and want to immerse you in the all-consuming journey of exploring everything about them. This will be on a personal, informal basis where I will showcase how to grow indigenous/edible plants, what to do with them (cooking, aesthetic gardening, conservation etc.). I will post about my academic research as that too progresses, and I will be able to share my published research for those that are nuts enough to dive into the academic archaeology world. Lastly, to keep it diverse I will post profiles on beautiful, interesting indigenous plants endemic to the Cape Floristic Region.

I really hope this blog will be something that helps you discover how special the plants in your back yard and in natural habitats are. I hope that this blog will be a reprieve from the bombardment of information regarding the pandemic, writing these pieces will certainly be a welcome escape for me. I hope you are all happy, and healthy, and most importantly safe.