3. The ‘riddle of germination’
In the mid-1920s, the demand for Rooibos outstripped the number of shrubs in the Cederberg.
New cultivation and harvesting techniques were needed. Rooibos had to be treated as an agricultural crop.
Dr Pieter Le Fras Nortier – a local surgeon and magistrate, botanist, Oxford Rhodes scholar and owner of the farm Klein Kliphuis, discussed the possibility of cultivating Rooibos in plantations with entrepreneur and Rooibos marketer Benjamin Ginsberg and farmer Olof Bergh. The model they investigated was that of the large plantations of black tea that were created in India in the mid-19th century by the British, who followed the tradition of sugar-cane plantations in the Caribbean. Nortier began to collect seeds from the superior form of Rooibos called Red, which grows in the Pakhuis and Grootkloof mountains.
The next step was to address the extremely low germination of seeds or, as Ginsberg put it, to solve ‘the riddle of germination’. Nortier, in all probability using old Mediterranean hard-shelled seed germination techniques, scarified the outer covering of the tiny seeds and planted them in seedbeds. The experiment was successful and Nortier eventually managed to harvest 80 bags of tea on Klein Kliphuis. Seedlings were also replanted at Bergh’s farm Varkenfontein as well as at Klein Kliphuis, where Nortier began to establish Rooibos plantations.
Nortier, who is hailed as the ‘father of the Rooibos industry’, was awarded an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, Victoria College (today Stellenbosch University) for his research on tea and other agricultural endeavours. Today an average 16 000 metric tonnes of Rooibos is produced in South Africa every year, of which around 50% is exported to 60 countries around the world. And it all began with the small and unassuming Rooibos seed.
