Blackjack Is Not a Weed. It Is Free Food Growing Everywhere in South Africa

Walk through any township, suburb, roadside verge, or vacant lot in South Africa and you will find blackjack. It grows in pavement cracks. It grows in abandoned fields. It grows along railway lines, in garden borders, between rows of maize, and in every patch of disturbed soil from the Cape to Limpopo. Every South African knows it because of the tiny black seeds with barbed bristles that stick to your socks, your trousers, and your dog’s fur.

What most South Africans do not know is that they are walking past free, highly nutritious food every single day.

Blackjack (Bidens pilosa) is not a weed to be cursed and pulled out. It is an edible vegetable that has been feeding people across Africa, Asia, and South America for centuries. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has classified it as an edible plant since 1975. It is richer in vitamin C than oranges. It contains more iron per 100 grams than spinach. It has been used in traditional medicine across southern Africa to treat over 40 different ailments. And it costs absolutely nothing because it grows everywhere, all by itself, without anyone planting it, watering it, or looking after it.

In a country where millions of families struggle to put enough vegetables on the table, this is not a small thing. This is a food revolution hiding in plain sight, growing in the cracks of a system that is failing the people who need it most.

What Is Blackjack?

Blackjack is a flowering herb in the sunflower family (Asteraceae). It originated in South America and has spread to every tropical and subtropical region on earth. In South Africa, it grows in all nine provinces and is one of the most common plants in the country. It thrives in disturbed soil, which means anywhere humans have been, whether that is a construction site, a ploughed field, a road verge, or a backyard.

The plant grows up to 1.5 metres tall with square stems, opposite leaves divided into three pointed leaflets, and small daisy-like flowers with white petals and yellow centres. The flowers produce the infamous black seeds with their barbed bristles that hitch rides on anything that passes by. A single plant can produce up to 6,000 seeds per year, and those seeds remain viable in the soil for years. This is why blackjack is everywhere. It is a survival machine.

In South Africa, blackjack goes by many names depending on the language and region. The Vhavenda call it mushidzhi. In isiZulu it is known as uqadolo or umhlabangubo. The Pedi call it mophodisa or mokolonyane. In isiXhosa it is called inongwe or umhalbangubo. These names are not names for a weed. They are names for a food plant that generations of South Africans have harvested, cooked, and eaten long before supermarkets existed.

Nutritional Value That Rivals Store-Bought Vegetables

The science behind blackjack’s nutritional profile is remarkable. According to WebMD’s analysis of Bidens pilosa, the plant contains 63 milligrams of vitamin C per 100 grams. An adult needs roughly 75 to 90 milligrams per day, which means a single serving of blackjack leaves gets you most of the way there. For context, an orange contains about 53 milligrams per 100 grams. Blackjack beats it.

The iron content is equally impressive at approximately 15 milligrams per 100 grams. That is significantly higher than spinach, which contains around 2.7 milligrams per 100 grams. Iron deficiency is one of the most common nutritional deficiencies in South Africa, particularly among women and children. A plant that grows free and wild in every province and delivers that much iron per serving should be treated as a national asset, not a garden nuisance.

Blackjack is also a meaningful source of zinc (around 19 mg per 100 g), beta-carotene (which the body converts to vitamin A), calcium, potassium, magnesium, and protein. A comprehensive scientific review published in the journal Heliyon described blackjack as an indigenous vegetable containing high amounts of nutrients that is easily accessible and cheap for underprivileged communities. The researchers noted that the plant acts as a protective food because of its essential nutrients, including beta-carotene, vitamins A, C, and E, and meaningful protein content.

Over 200 naturally occurring bioactive compounds have been identified in blackjack, including flavonoids, phenolic acids, and polyacetylenes. These are the same categories of compounds that health food companies charge premium prices for when they package them as supplements. In blackjack, they come free, growing in your yard.

How to Harvest Blackjack

Harvesting blackjack is simple, but there are a few things to know to get the best eating experience.

What to pick: You want the young leaves and tender shoot tips. The younger the plant, the better it tastes. Look for plants that are still actively growing with bright green, soft leaves. Avoid older plants that have gone to seed, as the leaves become tougher and more bitter. The ideal harvest is from plants that are 15 to 40 centimetres tall, before they flower.

When to pick: Blackjack is available year round in most parts of South Africa, though it grows most actively in the warmer, wetter months from October through March. New growth appears rapidly after rain, so a week or two after good rains is prime harvesting time.

Where to pick: This is important. Harvest blackjack from areas that are not contaminated. Avoid plants growing directly alongside busy roads where they may absorb vehicle exhaust pollutants. Avoid areas that have been sprayed with herbicides or pesticides. Avoid plants growing near industrial waste or sewage. Look for blackjack in gardens, open fields, rural areas, communal land, and any clean, untreated ground. The plant is what scientists call a hyperaccumulator, meaning it can absorb heavy metals from contaminated soil, so clean harvesting sites matter.

How to pick: Simply pinch or cut the top 10 to 15 centimetres of the young plant, including the tender leaves and stem tips. The plant will regrow from the cut point, giving you multiple harvests from the same patch across a season.

How to Cook Blackjack

Blackjack has a mild, slightly bitter, resinous flavour when raw. Most traditional preparations involve cooking, which softens the bitterness and makes the greens tender and pleasant. The Infonet Biovision resource on blackjack documents its widespread culinary use across Africa, prepared in various ways from country to country.

Boiled greens (the simplest method): Wash the young leaves and shoots thoroughly. Bring a pot of water to a boil, add the leaves, and cook for 5 to 10 minutes until tender. Drain and season with salt, a squeeze of lemon, and a splash of oil or butter if available. This is essentially the same as cooking spinach or morogo.

Sauteed with onion and tomato: This is probably the most popular South African preparation. Chop onion and tomato, fry in a little oil until soft, add the washed blackjack leaves, and cook together for 5 to 8 minutes. Season with salt and chilli if you like. Serve as a side dish with pap, rice, or bread.

In sour milk (amasi): This is a traditional preparation documented across eastern and southern Africa. Boil the young shoots and leaves, then mix them into amasi or maas. The sourness of the milk complements the slight bitterness of the blackjack beautifully. This is a protein-rich, nutrient-dense meal that costs almost nothing.

Dried for storage: Wash and boil the leaves briefly, then spread them in the sun to dry. Once fully dried, the leaves can be stored for months and rehydrated when needed during the dry season or when fresh vegetables are expensive. This is how communities across Africa have preserved blackjack for generations, ensuring year-round access to green vegetables.

As tea: Dry the leaves and steep them in hot water. Blackjack tea has been consumed across Africa and Asia for its health properties. In the Himalayan region, a version of this tea is a traditional daily beverage.

Traditional Medicine Uses in South Africa

Beyond food, blackjack has a deep history in southern African traditional medicine. This is not the focus of this article, and it is important to note that much of the medicinal research is still in early stages, but it is worth acknowledging the traditional knowledge that many South African communities have carried for generations.

The PROTA database documents that in South Africa, the Zulu use powdered blackjack leaves as a treatment for abdominal complaints. Across the broader region, leaf decoctions are used traditionally for headaches, ear infections, kidney problems, and digestive issues. Extracts have been used in southern Africa to address malaria symptoms. The Vhavenda of the Vhembe District in Limpopo Province have a documented history of consuming blackjack specifically for its health properties, including its traditional use for hypertension.

A detailed pharmacological review published in PMC confirmed that over 200 compounds have been isolated from different parts of the plant, and that various preparations have shown antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, anti-diabetic, and wound-healing properties in preliminary research. Early studies suggest potential benefits for blood sugar regulation, which is significant given the diabetes epidemic in South Africa.

These are early-stage findings and should not be taken as medical advice. But they do validate what traditional healers and community elders have known for generations: blackjack is not just food. It is medicine growing in your yard.

Why We Stopped Eating It

If blackjack is so nutritious and so widely available, why do most South Africans not eat it?

The answer has more to do with cultural perception than with the plant itself. As South Africa urbanised and globalised, traditional indigenous vegetables were increasingly viewed as “poor people’s food” or “famine food,” something you only ate if you could not afford “real” vegetables from the supermarket. This attitude is not unique to South Africa. It has happened across the developing world as Western food culture and commercial agriculture displaced indigenous food knowledge.

The NCBI Bookshelf resource on indigenous vegetables addresses this directly, noting that the notion of indigenous vegetables being food for the poor is no justification to regard them as inferior. The vegetables are called cheap and accessible, and that accessibility is precisely what makes them valuable, not something to be ashamed of.

There is a cruel irony here. The same plant that grows for free in every province, that delivers more iron than spinach and more vitamin C than oranges, that requires no seeds, no water, no fertiliser, and no money, has been systematically ignored because eating it was seen as a sign of poverty. Meanwhile, families spend hundreds of rands a month on store-bought vegetables that are often less nutritious.

Reclaiming blackjack as food is not about going backwards. It is about recognising that indigenous knowledge about food and nutrition was far ahead of where we gave it credit for, and that a plant this nutritious and this abundant deserves a place on every South African table.

Growing Blackjack on Purpose

You do not need to grow blackjack. It grows itself. But if you want a reliable supply of young, tender leaves for harvesting, you can encourage it.

Leave a patch of your garden undisturbed and unweeded. Blackjack will appear on its own within a growing season. If you want to speed things up, collect the mature black seeds from existing plants and scatter them on bare, moist soil. They germinate quickly at temperatures between 20 and 30 degrees Celsius. Within weeks you will have a dense patch of edible greens.

Harvest young plants regularly to encourage new growth and prevent them from going to seed too quickly. If you want a continuous supply, stagger your patches, allowing some plants to flower and seed while you harvest others. This is zero-cost, zero-effort food production.

For communities and schools looking to establish food gardens, blackjack can serve as a companion crop or a gap filler. Plant it alongside sunchokes, amaranth, and other resilient food crops to create a diverse, self-sustaining food system that requires minimal maintenance and no ongoing expense.

The Bottom Line

Blackjack is not a weed. It is one of the most nutritious, most resilient, and most widely available food plants in South Africa. It grows everywhere, costs nothing, requires no farming knowledge, no equipment, and no water. It delivers exceptional levels of iron, vitamin C, zinc, and beta-carotene. It has been eaten as a vegetable across Africa for generations and has been recognised as an edible plant by the United Nations for half a century.

Every South African who learns to recognise, harvest, and cook blackjack gains access to a free, year-round source of green vegetables that rivals anything on a supermarket shelf. In a country where food insecurity is not an abstract concept but a daily reality for millions of households, that knowledge is power.

Next time you see blackjack growing in a crack in the pavement, on a vacant lot, or in the corner of your garden, do not pull it out. Pick the young leaves, take them home, and cook them with onion and tomato. You might be surprised by how good free food can taste.