Ministry of Rooibos Open till four Search

Tagged: history

  1. The plant · In 1911 a botanist presented the rooibos shrub as a new species In a paper read in May 1911, Rudolf Marloth described the rooibos shrub as a new species, Borbonia pinifolia, though Nicolaas Burman had named the plant in 1768.
  2. The trade The trade · A 1933 Tea Sample Still Matches Today’s Cup A 2019 chemical analysis of thirty-seven tea samples set aside in 1933 found that the fingerprint of that decades-old rooibos and a commercial tea from 2016 are virtually identical, and it finally identified a forgotten reed tea from the same box as a completely different plant still drunk today at Wupperthal.
  3. The trade · Rooibos Was Sold as Healthy Before a Mother’s Colic Claim Rooibos was sold as healthy from at least 1907. Its reputation as a remedy for colic and allergy in babies began in 1968 with one mother's story, which the Rooibos Tea Control Board turned into a national campaign.
  4. The trade · How Rooibos Became a Crop, With Help From an Ant Heap Before rooibos could be farmed, its seed had to be found and coaxed to sprout. The answer ran through a Clanwilliam doctor, a hard seed coat, and a colony of seed-hoarding ants.
  5. The trade · Rooibos Pays the Khoi and San for Their Knowledge Since 2019 the rooibos industry has paid the Khoi and San a share of its earnings for the knowledge that the red bush makes a drink. Here is how that came about, how the levy works, and the argument that it does not go far enough.
  6. The trade · Four Times Someone Tried to Own the Word Rooibos The famous fight over the word "rooibos" ran from 1993 to 2005 in a US courtroom. It was not the first attempt to own the name, and it was not the last. Here are the other three, including the one the industry's own founding family gave back on its own.
  7. The trade The trade · Japan Boycotted Apartheid and Bought the Rooibos Anyway How the red bush reached what is now its largest market, straight through a contradiction the trade was built on.
  8. The trade The History of Rooibos The full history of rooibos, from a wild Cederberg shrub used by the Khoisan, through Benjamin Ginsberg's 1904 trade and Pieter Nortier's 1930 cultivation breakthrough, to the trademark fights and the protected name it carries today.