Change in medical plant use in Estonian ethnomedicine: A historical comparison between 1888 and 1994

Sõukand, Renata; Kalle, Raivo

doi:10.1016/j.jep.2011.02.030

Cited by 62 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…The latter publication is an electronic database, containing predominantly data on the medicinal use of the plants, with a few pieces on wild edibles [55]; from it, only records collected before 1970 were evaluated. There are also two publications based on this database [56,57], but only the one published by Sõukand and Kalle [57] has been included in the present review, as the other deals, exceptionally, with medicinal plants. Moreover, as the article on "teetaimed" [57] is based on HERBA database [55], then if the plant was used only for making infusions and no additional data on other uses was available in the database, the published article became the only source in Tab.…”

Section: The Sources Of the Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Historical ethnobotanical review of wild edible plants of Estonia (1770s–1960s)

Kalle

Sõukand

2012

Acta Soc Bot Pol

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IntroductionIn the quite recent past, during times of war, crop failure or other cases of food shortage, wild food plants have made a substantial addition to the human diet [1,2]. Nowadays, for the vast majority of the population of modern urbanized Europe, wild food plants seem to be of secondary importance as a resource for human nutrition; their gathering requires much more human labour than cultivated crops and vegetables do, their habitats are far from human settlements, and due to the loss of contact with nature, people simply do not know (or cannot recognize) wild plants. Nevertheless, even in Europe there are still many rural locations, where wild food plants are traditionally used on a daily basis. Such locations in southern and Western Europe are much appreciated by researchers in the field of ethnobotany [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. In Northern Europe the research seems to be completed and it seems that not much can be added to it, as in countries with high industrialization and safe social settings the need for wild food is close to zero and the existing ethnographic resources are already thoroughly researched (for a few examples see [14][15][16]).A different situation exists in Eastern Europe within the post-socialist countries. The relatively recent open access to western goods still enables us to remember the use of wild plants on a national level, and research in these areas often gives fruitful results [17,18]. Moreover, some of these countries, like Estonia and its neighbours, have extensive ethnographic collections. While in some of the countries, such as Poland [19][20][21], such resources have been thoroughly analysed, the content of the others is still unknown to the rest of the world, as they are either not used after collection, or their analyses are published in the native languages only. This makes cross-cultural and geographical analysis difficult or even impossible [21].To contribute a small stroke to the pattern of the use of wild plants of Europe from the Estonian side, we need first to review the historical use of wild food plants. The written legacy is rather thin: the few publications in German touching on the use of local species for food in the territory of present-day Estonia were written by Baltic German botanophiles [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29]. Moreover, they often described Estonia and Livonia [22,23] together, some even including Courland [27,28], and they cover only the period until the mid-19th century. Subsequent times are covered by the memory of respondents to folkloristic and ethnographic surveys, and later discussed by a few enthusiasts in Estonian only -dominantly through popular science publications. Hence, the aim of the study is to critically review all the publications concerning wild edibles covering the period 1770s-1960s. The data collected after 1970 has not yet been reflected in any reliable written source, except for a few of the authors' publications. AbstractThis paper is a historical ethnobotanical review of wild plants used by the resi...

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Section: The Sources Of the Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Historical ethnobotanical review of wild edible plants of Estonia (1770s–1960s)

Kalle

Sõukand

2012

Acta Soc Bot Pol

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“…In many cases ethnobotanical studies reveal either a dramatic or gradual loss of traditional knowledge and practices (e.g. [3,50,51]). The changes in patterns of wild plant use differ by region and are associated with lifestyle changes, urbanization, large-scale farming, lesser contact with nature and many other reasons.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wild food plant use in 21st century Europe: the disappearance of old traditions and the search for new cuisines involving wild edibles

Łuczaj

Pieroni

Tardío³

et al. 2012

Acta Soc Bot Pol

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230

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IntroductionIn several countries and regions of Europe ethnobotanical studies and reviews give us a picture of traditionally used wild food plants (e.g. Poland [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8], Spain [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26], Portugal [26,27], Italy [28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37], Greece [38,39], France [40], , the whole Mediterranean area [42][43][44], Austria [45][46][47], Slovakia [48] and the Nordic countries [49,50]).Plant use patterns are usually not static. In many cases ethnobotanical studies reveal either a dramatic or gradual loss of traditional knowledge and practices (e.g. [3,50,51]). The changes in patterns of wild plant use differ by region and are associated with lifestyle changes, urbanization, large-scale farming, lesser contact with nature and many other reasons. Moreover, times of famine seem to be in the distant past for industrially developed countries. Food made of cultivated plants and bought from the supermarket appears on the table with relatively little effort, while collecting wild species is more time consuming and season-dependent. In spite of that, the importance of wild food plants for food security and in shaping alternative models of consumption is emphasized [52]. Wild food plants cannot be considered "famine food" only, as many of them were and still are used on several other occasions as well (cf. [53]). Moreover, in Europe there are new phenomena associated with plant use appearing in modern societies. Some of them have to do with migration and new ethnic minorities appearing in cities and bringing new traditions with them. Other phenomena appear due to new trends in nutrition and self-medication facilitated by the instantaneous spread of information via the Internet. On top of that not all the traditions are gone, in some areas for a variety of reasons old traditions are cultivated while in others, they are lost.In this review we would like to give an overall picture of what is happening to the traditional use of wild food plants in different parts of Europe at the dawn of the 21st century. What are wild food plants?The term "wild" refers to those plants that grow without being cultivated. It mostly includes native species growing in their natural habitat, but sometimes managed, as well as introduced species that have been naturalized [15].Apart from that, a large number of other species are perceived as "wild" and labelled in this way, sometimes for marketing purposes (positive term) or as a negative term (as AbstractThe aim of this review is to present an overview of changes in the contemporary use of wild food plants in Europe, mainly using the examples of our home countries: Poland, Italy, Spain, Estonia and Sweden. We set the scene referring to the nutrition of 19th century peasants, involving many famine and emergency foods. Later we discuss such issues as children's wild snacks, the association between the decline of plant knowledge and the disappearance of plant use, the effects of over-exploitation, the decrease of t...

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“…Revisiting places where oldest ethnobotanical studies were performed has foremost importance for ethnobotany [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A century of changes in wild food plant use in coastal Croatia: the example of Krk and Poljica

et al. 2016

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The aim of this study was to document the use of wild foods in two locations in the coastal part of Croatia -on the island of Krk and in the Poljica area, near Split. We chose these places as they have historical data on plant use (1900 and 1903 respectively). We carried out 67 interviews in Poljica and 55 interviews in Krk to estimate the current use and knowledge of wild foods. Altogether, 80 species of wild food and herbal tea species of plants were recorded in Poljica and 76 in Krk. On average, 13.2 species were listed by per interview in Poljica, including 7.1 species of wild vegetables, and in Krk 14.6 species, including 7.9 species of wild vegetables. Out of the list of plant names recorded in the past, in Krk, we identified 82% of the taxa and in Poljica 86%.

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Change in medical plant use in Estonian ethnomedicine: A historical comparison between 1888 and 1994

Cited by 62 publications

References 31 publications

Historical ethnobotanical review of wild edible plants of Estonia (1770s–1960s)

Historical ethnobotanical review of wild edible plants of Estonia (1770s–1960s)

Wild food plant use in 21st century Europe: the disappearance of old traditions and the search for new cuisines involving wild edibles

A century of changes in wild food plant use in coastal Croatia: the example of Krk and Poljica

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