Making a Virtue of Necessity: The Use of Wild Edible Plant Species (Also Toxic) in Bread Making in Times of Famine According to Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti (1766)

Abstract

In 1766, the agricultural scientist Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti described for the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the wild and cultivated plant species that could be used, in times of famine, to increase the quantity of flour or vegetable mass in bread making. These wild plants can be defined as wild edible plants (WEPs) or “alimurgic species”, a concept usually traced back to Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti himself. The 342 plant names mentioned in the text are in the Tuscan vernacular, so a research work was done on bibliographic sources from the 1800s in order to match them with their current nomenclature. This process led to an “alimurgic flora” repertoire based on the writing of Targioni Tozzetti; and a comparison with our AlimurgITA database of 1103 wild edible plants used in Italy. It is particularly interesting that in his short treatise, Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti identified eight toxic plants (corresponding to 14 species), indicating how to eliminate the poisonous substances from their useful roots. We treat them in detail, examining their current and past use, their geographical distribution in Italy, and their eventual toxicity. We obtained 343 matches, of which 198 were reliable (certain matches) and 145 possessed some degree of uncertainty (due to generic or collective vernacular names). Among the 198 certain identifications, 140 species are present in the AlimurgITA database (92 mentioned for Tuscany) and 58 are not; for bread-making there are only documentary traces of 53 species for Italy and 7 for Tuscany. Moreover, among the total 198 species, 84 showed some degree of hazard. Researching edible toxic spontaneous species allows: (1) investigation, from an unusual perspective, of a historical period in which the poor conditions of some social strata led to finding unusual solutions to food provision; (2) idea generation to re-enable potentially useful WEPs whose use has been lost. Making a virtue of necessity!

Wild Edible Plants Used in Dalmatian Zagora (Croatia)

“…Although plants from this genus are occasionally used in southwestern Asia and the Caucasus [ 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 ], it is not widely used in Europe nowadays as a food plant due to it incredibly sharp taste when eaten raw or underprocessed, owing to the presence of oxalates. According to Paura and Di Marzio [ 37 ], Arum sp. has been utilized as a food source across various regions of Europe, particularly valued for the starch extracted from its tubers, which is used in bread preparation.…”

Wild Edible Plant Species in the ‘King’s Lagoon’ Coastal Wetland: Survey, Collection, Mapping and Ecological Characterization

“…Even those plants containing toxic compounds can be broadly included into the alimurgical categories by considering that local communities did not eat only edible plants but also particular parts of toxic plants [31]. The risk of the inappropriate use of toxic WEPs is well known, as are the operations that must be carried out to neutralize the toxic substances in order to make such plants fit for human consumption [32].…”