Homogenisation of Biocultural Diversity: Plant Ethnomedicine and Its Diachronic Change in Setomaa and Võromaa, Estonia, in the Last Century

Abstract

When studying the evolution of the use of medicinal plants, it is important to identify what role, and to what extent, external factors and local biocultural diversities play in shaping cultural changes. We chose as a case study, which forms part of a larger project, a religiously and linguistically distinct group, the Seto, and compared their current and past plant use with that of the surrounding Võro. Ethnobotanical fieldwork was conducted in the summers of 2018 and 2019. Current uses of plants constituted 34% of the total registered use reports and 41% of those were used to treat general diseases or used as prophylactics. In total, the medicinal use of 86 taxa was recorded, and of these 48 were prevalent. Strong erosion (the abandonment of 43, mainly wild taxa used historically) and valorisation of the uses shared with neighboring as well as distant regions once part of the Soviet Union, were evident, signalling the potential influence of the centralised distribution of knowledge. The results clearly show that the plant medicine-related biocultural diversities of the two groups have been considerably homogenised, eroded and influenced by the knowledge spread through various means during the Soviet era and over the last 30 years.

Lamiaceae Plants in Bulgarian Rural Livelihoods—Diversity, Utilization, and Traditional Knowledge

“…Specific plant spices and their combinations play key roles in the local cuisines that underline their uniqueness [67][68][69]. Practicing of traditional (agro)ecological knowledge is of crucial importance, as demographic and socioeconomic changes in the rural areas, especially in industrialized societies, gradually diminish natural human connectedness [4,70,71]. While utilization of M. spicata was reported from all over the world [29,[72][73][74], S. hortensis was found popular both as a culinary herb and a medicinal plant mainly in the Balkans, Iran, and Turkey [75][76][77].…”

The nexus between traditional foraging and its sustainability: a qualitative assessment among a few selected Eurasian case studies

“…Our previous findings have shown that the local communities that have remained in close contact with nature have maintained considerable peculiarities regarding plant foraging (e.g. Mattalia et al, 2021 ), although in Estonia foraging practices are fading away within the lifetime of one generation due to changes in land management and social changes (Kalle & Sõukand, 2016 ; Kalle et al, 2020 ; Sõukand et al, 2022 ). However, there still exists a remarkable store of traditional/local environmental knowledge (TEK) on foraging, as recorded in each of the case studies.…”

“…In the current study, we mainly rely on unpublished qualitative data arising from several previous ethnobotanical case studies devoted to recording plant-related foraging practices that were conducted in coastal Syria (Sulaiman et al, 2022 ), Eastern Europe (Kalle, 2017 ; Kalle & Sõukand, 2016 ; Pieroni & Sõukand, 2017 , 2018 ; Mattalia et al, 2020 , 2021 ; Sõukand, 2016 ; Sõukand & Kalle, 2016 ; Sõukand & Pieroni, 2016; Stryamets et al, 2021 ; Sõukand et al, 2022 ), and North Pakistan (Aziz et al, 2020a , b , 2021a , b ), representing three different human ecological environments as described in Table 1 .…”

Meizi-Consuming Culture That Fostered the Sustainable Use of Plum Resources in Dali of China: An Ethnobotanical Study

“…On the other hand, the indigenous culture formed around native organisms, such as traditional ecological concepts and village rules and regulations, restricts local people from damaging the environment and endangering local organisms [ 57 , 58 ]. The biodiversity of indigenous areas is positively correlated with the cultural diversity of indigenous peoples [ 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 ].…”