How Buchu is used in modern medicine

Other Common Names: Bookoo, Bucco, Bucku, Short Buchu, Agathosma betulina, Barosma Betulina, Barosma Crenulata, Diosma betulina.

Range: S.W. Cape, South Africa.

Habitat: Grow established plants in a well drained, sunny, hot position. Minimum care is needed. Water on very hot days, or during dry spells.

A South African herb, first used by the San to make tea, is causing an international stir as a treatment for a wide range of ailments including arthritis and high blood pressure.

It's called buchu - a round, green plant about the size of a hedgehog that belongs to the fynbos plant kingdom and occurs naturally only in mountainous areas of the Western Cape.

Native to the Cape region, Buchu has been used in Europe since the 16th century not only for urinary and prostate problems, but for gout and rheumatism as well. It is still popular in South Africa.

Buchu is a small shrubby plant with round dark-green leaves which grows wild in the remote ravines of the Cedarberg, Piketberg and Du Toit's Kloof. Another species, known colloquially as steenbok buchu, comes from Swellendam; and a third species, river buchu, has oval leaves and grows along watercourses.

The Hottentots use several species, all under the common name of 'Bucku.' The leaves have a rue-like smell, and are used by the natives to perfume their bodies. Its natural oil has a powerful penetrating aroma, akin to peppermint.

The Hottentots would search for the plant, identified in winter by a small white flower, and use it as medicine for a variety of ailments, from rheumatism to bladder complaints, as well as a perfume.



The exporting of buchu leaves to Britain and the US, where it was used as a hangover cure, was a well- developed industry last century.

Buchu leaves are collected while the plant is flowering and fruiting, and are then dried and exported from Cape Town. The bulk of the Buchu exported to London from South Africa eventually finds its way to America, where it is used in certain proprietary medicines. By the '40s, buchu exports to the US were worth more than R200 000 a year and to the UK more than R160 000.

Buchu is a close relative of the orange, and the leaves have a peppermint aroma and a bitter, astringent taste. Branches of the shrub are harvested and left in the shade to dry for two weeks.

The leaves fall off the stalks and may be used to flavor vinegar, a useful balm for bruises and strains, and to brew buchu tea, recommended for kidney and bladder problems.

The principal constituents of Buchu leaves are volatile oil and mucilage, also diosphenol, which has antiseptic properties, and is considered by some to be the most important constituent of Buchu its absence from the variety known as 'Long Buchu' has led to the exclusion of the latter leaves from the British Pharmacopoeia.

The Cape Government exercises strict control over the gathering of Buchu leaves and has lately made the terms and conditions more onerous, in order to prevent the wholesale destruction of the wild plants, no person being permitted to pick or buy Buchu without a licence. Cultivation experiments with Buchu have been made from time to time by private persons, and during the war experiments were conducted at the National Botanic Gardens, Kirstenbosch (near Cape Town), the result of which (given in the South African Journal of Industries, 1919, 2, 748) indicate that, under suitable conditions, the commercial cultivation of Buchu should prove a success, B. betulina, the most valuable kind, being the species alone to be grown. The plant is particularly adapted to dry conditions, and may be cultivated on sunny hillsides where other crops will not succeed.

In gravel, inflammation and catarrh of the bladder it is specially useful.

Buchu has long been known at the Cape as a stimulant tonic and remedy for stomachic troubles, where it is infused in Brandy and known as Buchu Brandy. Its use was learnt from the Hottentots.

It was introduced into official medicine in Great Britain in 1821 as a remedy for cystitis urethritis, nephritis and catarrh of the bladder.



It also has tonic, astringent and antiseptic properties. It is used for genito-urinary inflammations and infections such as cystitis, urethritis and prostatitis.

The most popular form of ingestion cure is buchu brandy, made by steeping a few twigs of the plant in a bottle of brandy or, even better, witblits moonshine. What the botanicals can't cure, the alcohol sorts out.

Known Hazards: Buchu can cause mucosal irritation and is contraindicated where there is acute genito-urinary tract inflammation. This irritation is due to the glycoside diosmin and the essential oil components diosphenol and pulegone.

Contraindicated in kidney inflammation.

Another species, Barosma crenulata or "oval buchu" is sometimes substituted for and labeled as buchu. This spurious plant is contraindicated during pregnancy because it contains a high level of pulegone which is a mucosal irritant and uterine stimulant.

  • SA's new power plant. Sunday Times (S.A.) - news - 21 November 1999
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