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Background: Studies on the in-depth documentation of wild greens use in the Mediterranean Diet (MD) are vital to understanding patterns of cross-geographical change in wild food ingredients in the Mediterranean context, their appreciated taste, and possible evolution. Our present study aims to document the leafy, wild-sourced plant portion of the MD in the unique and isolated matrifocal community of Olympos, North Karpathos Isle, Greece., Methods: An ethnobotanical field study focussing on traditionally wild-sourced edible greens (chórta) was conducted during the spring of 2023 via 42 semi-structured interviews with local people., Results: Our study documented 69 wild green taxa, along with their culinary uses and linguistic labels. Half of the gathered wild greens have a bitter taste (i.e. members of Asteraceae and Brassicaceae), while 70% of the top-quoted greens are bitter. These greens were mostly consumed cooked. Nearly half of the quoted taxa had been previously recorded as used in the food system of central Crete. In contrast, one-fourth of the folk phytonyms recorded in Olympos do not match the ones found in Crete and the rest of Greece, which may be linked to the Doric culture that the community remained attached to because of its isolation. However, the plant-human interaction kernel is similar to that of surrounding areas. Moreover, the community of Olympos seems to rely less on aromatic wild greens (compared with Crete)., Conclusion: Cross-cultural foraging comparison is crucial for better understanding the circulation, exchange, and evolution of local plant knowledge under the MD umbrella. Our study assesses, in particular, how noteworthy phytolinguistic differences indicating different ancient trajectories of cultural encounters/exchanges may not necessarily be reflected in differences in terms of plant reports. As often postulated in linguistic ethnobiology, ancient linguistic labels sometimes remain as "empty shells". Given the fragile environment and the increasing over-tourism during the summer months the study site is experiencing, the presented data could contribute to a more substantial shift towards sustainable eco-tourism initiatives involving the foraging and cooking of wild greens., Competing Interests: Declarations Ethics approval and consent to participate The International Society of Ethnobiology Code of Ethics was strictly followed, and informed consent was always obtained from each participant before interviews. Consent for publication Not applicable. Competing interests The authors declare no competing interests., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Fungi have been used for medicinal purposes for many centuries. This study, based on 35 historical written sources and 581 in-depth semi-structured interviews from eight countries in the western borderlands of the former Soviet Union, investigates the medicinal use of fungi by local communities. We compared the taxa and uses obtained from fieldwork and historical sources with works that advocated fungi use within Soviet herbals, representing the centralised medical system. During fieldwork, we identified eight locally used fungi and one lichen. The highest numbers of medicinal uses were documented in Russia, Estonia and Ukraine. Studies published before the Soviet era listed 21 fungal taxa and one lichen species used in the study region. However, only six of these taxa were mentioned as used by people in our field studies (Amanita muscaria, Boletus edulis, Lycoperdon, Morchella, Phallus impudicus and Cetraria islandica). Notably, these same six taxa were consistently endorsed in Soviet herbals. Of the remaining three taxa recorded in the fieldwork, none were mentioned in historical written sources. However, they were promoted either in Soviet herbals (Inonotus obliquus, Kombucha) or later popular publications (Cantharellus cibarius). This highlights the significant influence of written sources on the use of fungi for medicinal purposes within the studied local communities., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Wild vegetables (WVs) have been an essential source of human nutrition since ancient times. Foraging is a millennia-old practice that has gained more attention recently and is becoming fashionable, especially in restaurants in urban areas, as they attract customers who see WVs as an innovative sensory element and specialty food. Some cooks have used very few WVs for decades, but most chefs have only recently introduced them in their modern restaurants. Our study aims to have a deeper understanding of the diversity of WVs used by restaurants in the Lombardy region in Northern Italy and to know how they are introduced onto different menus, as well as the source of knowledge and the innovation paths related to the use/introduction of WVs in the selected sample of restaurants. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 restaurant managers, chefs, and their professional foragers in the Lombardy region in Northern Italy in 2022; fifty-four wild plant taxa were recorded to be used in the considered restaurants. The collected data were analyzed to understand the current situation and the potential developments of this practice by exploring the reasons/motivations that underpin the inclusion of WVs in restaurants. A broad spectrum of restaurants was considered to evaluate the potential differences in handling and sourcing these ingredients. The results demonstrated that this trend has mainly been driven by attempts to revitalize traditional cuisines and to generate a positive impact on health, but the actual culinary preparations based upon WVs are often original and remarkably diverge from the Italian food ethnobotanical heritage. Moreover, concerns related to the environmental sustainability of these practices have been addressed.

Background: Understanding how Local Ecological Knowledge (LEK) evolves over time is crucial for fostering social and environmental responsibility. This study aims to develop a conceptual model of plant knowledge circulation, providing insights into the temporal dynamics of LEK in the Polish-Lithuanian-Belarusian border region. It explores the key patterns and driving forces behind changes in the use of wild plants for food., Methods: Field research was conducted in 60 rural settlements across Podlasie Voivodeship (Poland), Vilnius Region (Lithuania), and Hrodna Region (Belarus). This included 200 semi-structured interviews and participant observation among two local communities, Lithuanians and Poles. To assess the temporal dynamics of wild food use, we performed a cross-ethnic, cross-border analysis over time, dividing the data into three major temporal dimensions: past, continuous, and recently acquired uses., Results: Of the 72 wild plant taxa reported by Poles or Lithuanians in the Polish-Lithuanian-Belarusian borderland, 47 were continuously used for food, 58 were utilised in the past, and 41 were recently acquired. Cross-country trends were similar, with Poland showing more past uses. Diachronic comparisons between Poles and Lithuanians in each studied country revealed no significant differences. Recently acquired taxa overlapped considerably with those used continuously and in the past. The most diversely utilised taxa showed the greatest overlaps. By observing the movement of specific plant taxa within various time dimensions, we distinguished overlapping flow variations: retention (3 taxa), decay (11), invention (8), stagnation (17), revitalisation (6), re-invention (3), and knowledge in motion (24). Shifts in the use of wild food plants were influenced by changes in environmental conditions, governmental policies, cultural practices, and economic factors., Conclusion: The findings of this study have important implications for improving methods of tracking changes in LEK and enhancing our understanding of the relationship between people and nature. Our results underscore the importance of considering knowledge circulation over time in different directions. Recognising the various stages of knowledge circulation might help in pursuing sustainable solutions that balance the needs of human communities with environmental protection., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

This essay brings forward the idea that there is more than meets the eye in local knowledge systems than what science can show us now. To comprehend this, we need to make a conceptual jump and look for the "dark matter" (the notion borrowed from astronomy that refers to a hypothetical form of matter that does not interact with light or electromagnetic fields) that can potentially sustain local knowledge. Considering that it is a complex of knowledge, practices, and beliefs contained in TEK, knowledge in LEK does not correspond to the notion of knowledge in science. Therefore, in order to map LEK-science interactions, we will refer to the concept of peoples' knowledge of LEK as acknowledgement and the scientific recognition and awareness of information, facts, and principles as knowledge. Applying this to a Johari Window, we can observe four categories of LEK in a known-unknown/acknowledged-unacknowledged matrix. We can refer to unknown and unacknowledged as dark local knowledge. Indeed, local knowledge systems contain many aspects that modern science cannot yet explain, as a major part of its components are not even considered in scholarly research. Dark local knowledge can potentially provide us with the invaluable touch of experience of countless generations, opening different ways of seeing reality., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Plant foraging is a millennia-old activity still practiced by many people in the Middle East, particularly in the Fertile Crescent region, where several socioeconomic, ecological, and cultural factors shape this practice. This study seeks to understand the drivers of plant foraging in this complex region characterized by highly diverse linguistic, religious, and cultural groups. Our study aims to document the wild plants used by Kurds in Western Iran, identify similarities and differences among Hawraman and Mukriyan Kurdish groups in Iran, and compare our findings with a previous study on the Hawramani in Iraq. Forty-three semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted in Kurdish villages of Western Iran. The results revealed the use of 44 wild food plant taxa, their preparation, and culinary uses. Among the reported taxa, 28 plant taxa were used by Mukriyani, and 33 by Hawramani. The study revealed a significant difference between the Hawraman and Mukriyan regions in Iran, whereas there is a high similarity between Hawramani Kurds in Iran and Iraq. We found that the invisible cultural border carries more weight than political divisions, and this calls for a paradigm shift in how we perceive and map the distribution of ethnobotanical knowledge.

Background: In multicultural societies, traditional knowledge among minorities faces several challenges. Minority groups often face difficult situations living in specific peripheral geographies and striving to retain their biocultural heritage, including medicinal plant knowledge and practices. Folk medicinal plant knowledge is a dynamic eco-cultural complex influenced by various environmental, socio-cultural, and political factors. Examining medicinal plant knowledge among minorities has been an increasingly popular topic in cross-cultural ethnobiology. It also helps understand the dynamics of local/traditional ecological knowledge (LEK/TEK) change within a given community. The current study was designed to investigate the status of medicinal plant knowledge among two linguistic groups, i.e. Ormurs and Pathans, living in a remote valley of West Pakistan., Methods: We recruited 70 male study participants from the studied groups for semi-structured interviews to record the medicinal plant use of their communities. Data were compared among the two studied communities using the stacked charts employing the presence or absence of data with Past 4.03 and Venn diagrams. Use reports (URs) were counted for each recorded taxon., Results and Discussion: A total of seventy-four medicinal plants were quoted as used as ethnomedicines by the researched communities. Most of the reported plants were used to treat digestive and liver problems. The cross-cultural comparison revealed a considerable homogeneity of medicinal plant knowledge (the two groups commonly used more than seventy plants); however, comparing uses recorded for the widely utilised medicinal plants showed numerous idiosyncratic uses among Ormurs but very few among Pathans. Ormurs reported a higher number of cultivated, wild, and imported plant uses than did Pathans. These results indicate that, compared to Pathans, the Ormur linguistic minority retain more folk medicinal plant knowledge, which may be explained by the fact that they have incorporated different folk remedies: their "own knowledge" plus that of Pathans, with whom they have lived together for centuries. Moreover, the local plant nomenclature among Ormurs was highly affected by the plant nomenclature of Pathans., Conclusion: The current study revealed that living together for a few centuries has not implied sharing plant knowledge (as the Pathans do not seem to have learnt from the Ormurs) or, in other words, that plant knowledge exchanges have been unidirectional. The findings show that the Pashto dominant culture may have possibly put pressure on the minority groups and affected local plant-centred cultural practices, as we see in the case of local plant nomenclature hybridisation among Omuri speakers. Hence, it is imperative to employ diverse educational strategies to revitalise the decline of medicinal plant knowledge in the studied communities, especially among Ormurs, who need more attention as they face more challenges than the other group. Locally based strategies should be devised to restore the fading connection with nature, which will be advantageous for revitalising plant knowledge., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

Background: Ethnobotanical knowledge about the role of plants in fisheries provides valuable ecological information vital for sustainable management of local resources; however, it is diluted and understudied globally. This literature review aims to map the knowledge of plant use within traditional fishing communities., Methods: Through the PRISMA method, we identified and selected 34 articles reporting the use of plants in fisheries, and including 344 taxa of plants and algae. Uses of plants and algae were grouped into different categories., Results: In the novel categorization of fishery-related uses we proposed, the most mentioned were for fishing and building/repair of fishing artifacts and habitat-related uses, while the records of plants related to fiber uses, providing aid in fishing management and species causing problems, were among the least mentioned. Semi-structured interview is most commonly used with local resource users, especially fishery experts, in exploring perceptions on plant use within traditional fishing communities. Diversity was high in all the recorded families, but most were reported locally., Conclusion: Ethnobotanical studies with fishers are not common in the documented literature but they provide a large number of use reports. On the basis this review, in most of the world, the information is of a casual and sporadic nature. Fishers can provide information on aquatic plants and algae that create problems and aid in fishing management, which are crucial in understanding the ecosystem of a region experiencing environmental challenges. This knowledge is greatly understudied globally and undergoing a rapid decline, as highlighted in several of the reviewed articles. Thus, further systematic research on fishery-related uses of plants by fisherfolk is needed considering its potential contribution to the sustainable management of fishery resources., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

The current study reports an ethnobotanical field investigation of traditionally gathered and consumed wild greens ( Chorta ) in one of the five so-called Blue Zones in the world: Ikaria Isle, Greece. Through 31 semi-structured interviews, a total of 56 wild green plants were documented along with their culinary uses, linguistic labels, and locally perceived tastes. Most of the gathered greens were described as bitter and associated with members of Asteraceae and Brassicaceae botanical families (31%), while among the top-quoted wild greens, species belonging to these two plant families accounted for 50% of the wild vegetables, which were consumed mostly cooked. Cross-cultural comparison with foraging in other areas of the central-eastern Mediterranean and the Near East demonstrated a remarkable overlapping of Ikarian greens with Cretan and Sicilian, as well as in the prevalence of bitter-tasting botanical genera. Important differences with other wild greens-related food heritage were found, most notably with the Armenian and Kurdish ones, which do not commonly feature many bitter greens. The proven role of extra-oral bitter taste receptors in the modulation of gastric emptying, glucose absorption and crosstalk with microbiota opens new ways of looking at these differences, in particular with regard to possible health implications. The present study is also an important attempt to preserve and document the bio-cultural gastronomic heritage of Chorta as a quintessential part of the Mediterranean diet. The study recommends that nutritionists, food scientists, and historians, as well as policymakers and practitioners, pay the required attention to traditional rural dietary systems as models of sustainable health.

The circulation of local ecological knowledge (LEK) is a promising avenue of research for wild plant studies. To encourage the acceptance, celebration, and appreciation of biocultural diversity, which is rapidly disappearing nowadays, we need to estimate and assess multifaceted local ecological knowledge. It has direct application for local communities in informing effective policies for improving food security and building community-specific responses to environmental and social transitions. The present study draws on data collected among two ethnic groups-Lithuanians and Poles-via 200 semi-structured in-depth interviews and participant observation conducted in 2018 and 2019 in Podlasie Voivodeship (Poland), the Vilnius Region (Lithuania), and the Hrodna Region (Belarus). We aimed to observe LEK circulation in the border area through cross-ethnic and cross-country comparisons. A total of 2812 detailed use reports of wild plants were recorded. In total, 72 wild plant taxa belonging to 33 plant families were used across the food domain. Our findings show that cross-country differences were minimal, while there was some variation between the ethnic groups selected as case studies. We emphasize the need, in future studies, to combine quantitative research with qualitative approaches in order to more thoroughly identify peculiarities of cross-border circulation as a reservoir for community food resilience and biocultural diversity.

Background: The Patrak Valley is home to communities, which have been inextricably linked with nature for generations, and local plant knowledge (LPK) represents an important part of their local cultural diversity. In general, globalization has come at the expense of local plant knowledge among several mountain societies, and therefore the current investigation has been undertaken to record the (possibly) last remaining wild food plant/mushroom foraging practices among Pathans, Kohistanis, and Gujjars living in the highlands of the Hindukush, North Pakistan., Methods: Data on the uses of wild food plants and mushrooms (WFPs) were collected through 120 semi-structured interviews. The data were cross-culturally compared among the three linguistic groups. Venn diagrams were used to visualize the comparative analysis. To determine the patterns of similarities in plant use among the different ethnic groups, we used the Jaccard similarity index (JI). The recorded data were also compared with the existing Pakistani food ethnobotanical literature., Results: A total of 68 WFPs were recorded, the majority of which were used as raw snacks and as cooked vegetables. Fruit was the most frequently reported plant part among the three researched groups. Cross-cultural comparison revealed that 37% of the used plants were commonly shared by the three studied groups. Pathans have retained rich knowledge on WFPs, and they show a comparatively closer affinity with Kohistanis is the use of WFPs compared to Gujjars. While we observed some idiosyncrasies for each of the researched groups, the distinctive plant uses among Gujjars provide insight into their food ecology, their particular human-ecological system centered on mobile pastoralism and their limited exchanges of local food/ecological knowledge due to endogamic patterns. A literature survey revealed some novel or little-known ingredients within Pakistani food ethnobotany/ethnomycology, such as Aesculus indica, Agaricus campestris, Apteranthes tuberculata, Duchesnea indica, Equisetum arvense, Eremurus himalaicus, Isodon rugosus, Morella esculenta, Sophora mollis, and Drimia indica., Conclusion: The researched communities have retained important plant knowledge which could be implemented through future development programs considering that most of these traditional foraging practices fulfill environmental and social sustainability standards. Further field studies are required to thoroughly investigate the patterns of foraging among highland pastoral societies in other parts of the Hindukush region and especially their potential for the ongoing ecological transition., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

The study of migrants' ethnobotany can help to address the diverse socio-ecological factors affecting temporal and spatial changes in local ecological knowledge (LEK). Through semi-structured and in-depth conversations with ninety interviewees among local Pathans and Afghan refugees in Kohat District, NW Pakistan, one hundred and forty-five wild plant and mushroom folk taxa were recorded. The plants quoted by Afghan refugees living inside and outside the camps tend to converge, while the Afghan data showed significant differences with those collected by local Pakistani Pathans. Interviewees mentioned two main driving factors potentially eroding folk plant knowledge: (a) recent stricter border policies have made it more difficult for refugees to visit their home regions in Afghanistan and therefore to also procure plants in their native country; (b) their disadvantaged economic conditions have forced them to engage more and more in urban activities in the host country, leaving little time for farming and foraging practices. Stakeholders should foster the exposure that refugee communities have to their plant resources, try to increase their socio-economic status, and facilitate both their settling outside the camps and their transnational movement for enhancing their use of wild plants, ultimately leading to improvements in their food security and health status.

The study recorded the food uses of wild food plants (WFPs) among the Sarikoli diaspora and the dominant Wakhi in Broghil Valley, North Pakistan, to understand their food adaptation, mainly by looking through the lens of food ethnobotanies. A total of 30 participants took part in the study, which included 15 elderly individuals from each ethnic group. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews. We recorded 29 WFPs, mostly used as cooked vegetables and snacks. The food uses, as well as the local plant nomenclatures, linked to WFPs of the two studied groups were completely homogenized, which could be attributed to the cultural assimilation of the Sarikoli people to Wakhi culture. We found that although traditional knowledge on WFPs has been homogenized, social change in nearby regions is also threatening the traditional knowledge of the two communities, as evidenced by the smaller number of plants reported compared to that of all other field ethnobotanical studies conducted in nearby regions. Moreover, the growth of legal restrictions and sanctions on accessing natural resources are posing serious challenges to cultural resilience in the valley, and the restrictions on cross-border movement in particular are creating challenges for those who have cross-border kinship relationships between the two groups. We suggest specific measures, such as the promotion of food tourism and educational activities, to protect traditional knowledge and bicultural heritage from further erosion in the region.

The historical use of medicinal plants is of special interest because the use of plants for healing is a rapidly changing, highly culture-specific and often need-specific practice, which also depends on the availability of resources and knowledge. To set an example of folkloristic data analysis in ethnobotany, we analyzed texts from the database, HERBA, identifying as many plants and diseases as possible. The research was limited to the Seto, Räpina and Vastseliina parishes in Estonia. The use of 119 taxa belonging to 48 families was identified, of which nine were identified at the genus level, four ethnotaxa were identified as two possible botanical taxa and fifteen ethnotaxa were unidentifiable. The most frequently mentioned taxa were Pinus sylvestris , Matricaria discoidea and Valeriana officinalis . High plant name diversity as well as high heterogeneity in the plants used were observed, especially in earlier records. The use of local wild taxa growing outside the sphere of everyday human activities, which was abandoned during Soviet occupation, signals an earlier, pre-existing rich tradition of plant use and a deep relationship with nature. Working with archival data requires knowledge of historical contexts and the acceptance of the possibility of not finding all the answers.

The traditional foraging of wild vegetables (WVs) has played an important role in the post-Neolithic development of rural local food systems of the Near East and the Mediterranean. This study assessed the WVs gathered by the ancient Maronite Arabic diaspora of Kurmajit/Kormakitis village in Northern Cyprus and compared them with those gathered by their Cypriot and Arab Levantine neighbors. An ethnobotanical field survey focusing on WVs was conducted via twenty-two semi-structured interviews among the few remaining Maronite elderly inhabitants (approximately 200); and the resulting data were compared with those described in a few field studies previously conducted in Cyprus, Lebanon, and coastal Syria. Wild vegetables in Kormakitis are grouped into a folk category expressed by the emic lexeme Şxex , which roughly corresponds to the Greek concept of Chorta (wild greens). The large majority of Şxex have Greek folk phytonyms and they overlap for the most part with the WVs previously reported to be gathered by Greek Cypriots, although a remarkable number of WVs are also shared with that of the other groups. The findings address a possible adaptation of Maronite WV foraging to the Greek one, which may be explained by the fact that the Maronite minority and the majority Greek communities lived side by side for many centuries. Additionally, after Turkish occupation in 1974, a remarkable migration/urbanization of Maronites to the main Greek centers on the southern side of the isle took place, and Kurmajit became part of Cypriot trans-border family networks.

In the Soviet Union, wild food played a secondary role in diet (as cultivated species dominated). Yet the authorities eventually acknowledged their importance as diet diversifiers and a safety reservoir, and started to promote their use through various means, including publishing books on the use of wild food plants. These government publications appeared during a specific time, and therefore, we mapped all centralized publications in order to understand the dynamics of the promotion of wild-plant-related knowledge. For deeper analysis, we selected a sample of 12 books promoting wild food plants, and compared the taxa and uses represented in these works, which fall into two key periods: during World War II (1941-1943) and after the war (1953-1989). A total of 323 plant taxa belonging to 69 plant families were named, of which Rosaceae had the highest number of proposed food uses, prompting the reader to explore the use of borderland species. Most diverse food uses were attributed to Sorbus aucuparia , followed by Rosa and Vaccinium oxycoccos . Wartime books had fewer taxa with less variety, with a clear preference for staple food and substitutes, while post-war books promoted desserts and alcoholic drinks.

Background: Historical ethnobotanical data can provide valuable information about past human-nature relationships as well as serve as a basis for diachronic analysis. This data note aims to present a dataset which documented medicinal plant uses, mentioned in a selection of German-language sources from the 19 th century covering the historical regions of Estonia, Livonia, Courland, and Galicia. Methods: Data was mainly entered by systematic manual search in various ethnobotanical historical German-language works focused on the medicinal use of plants. Data about plant and non-plant constituents, their usage, the mode of administration, used plant parts, and their German and local names was extracted and collected into a database in the form of Use Reports., Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed., (Copyright: © 2022 Anegg M et al.)

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is a dangerous infectious disease of even-toed ungulates, however since 1991, the European Union has banned preventive vaccination. During the occupation of the USSR, there were two outbreaks in Estonia: the first started in 1952 (at which time the barns typically housed about 20 cows); and the second began in 1982 (a period when barns typically housed several 100 animals). Neither outbreak was reported to the international community. At that time, it was also forbidden to talk about the disease in the internal media, and speakers could be punished. This study sought to find answers as to how the disease was treated and eliminated in the Estonian SSR, how infected animals and milk were handled, and if some of the methods used can be applied today. Written archival sources and 29 interviews with specialists remembering the outbreaks were used. Preventive slaughter of animals in the USSR was prohibited during the outbreak. As a preventive measure vaccination was used, traveling out of their counties by people were restricted and disinfection mats were used on the roads. In sick animals, udder wounds were treated with various wound ointments, such as zinc ointment, but also ointment made from boiled spruce resin. Birch tar was also recommended in the literature for leg treatments. Mouth wounds were washed with potassium permanganate solution. Workers used rubber gloves when handling sick animals. The barns were disinfected with lime and ash water. The milk from the diseased cows was pasteurized and given to calves, pigs, or diseased animals. Animals that did not recover were transferred to a meat processing plant. The meat was kept in potassium permanganate solution before processing and canned or made into sausages. When the disease was discovered, farm workers were locked in barns and released only when the disease had been eliminated. Such inhumane treatment could only be practiced in a totalitarian society., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Kass, Viltrop, Prakofjewa, Sõukand and Kalle.)

Plant foraging is an important human ecological phenomenon being studied by a number of contemporary ethnobiologists as well as by a few social anthropologists among rural communities and, more recently, in urban environments. The sustainability dimension of foraging is, however, largely unexplored. We analyse a few case studies from recent field research and qualitatively assess both the environmental and social sustainability of diverse patterns of traditional foraging practices in three distinct human ecological environments (horticulturalism-, forestry-, and pastoralism-driven) located in the Eastern Mediterranean, Eastern Europe, and North Pakistan, i.e. we address the question of when does traditional foraging become unsustainable and what factors may influence this. The main findings are multidimensional. First, in all case studies, we sometimes observed competitive foraging among the gatherers of certain wild food plants potentially causing ecological degradation; such unsustainable practices seem to be linked to the market pressure on certain species. However, also customs and norms promoted by states can be detrimental (former Soviet Union), as well as climate change (Eastern Europe), and marginalisation of some minority groups (Pakistan). Second, in the Mediterranean Syrian context, wild food plant resources are largely represented by widely available weedy "wild" vegetables, normally (but not exclusively) collected by women, and usually easily accessible; only very few wild food plants seem to be threatened due to specific market demands or to disequilibria created by household economic instabilities due to the recent war. We also argue that unsustainable foraging is enhanced by the abandonment of daily practices and continuous interaction with the natural environment and by the increasingly uneven distribution of active practical knowledge on wild food plants among the middle-aged and younger population. Facilitating the transmission of sustainable foraging knowledge and practices could be therefore crucial, also for coping with food insecurity in times of crisis; but for that to occur, holistic environmental and food educational frameworks, appropriate policies for fostering community-based biodiversity conservation and also social cohesion and communal management of lands should be seriously considered as well. Moreover, future gastronomic and eco-tourism initiatives, if organised in a thoughtful manner, could represent a positive turning point not only for the local small-scale economies of the considered rural communities but also for helping them to dynamically preserve the entire socio-ecological system underpinned in plant foraging and ultimately to better adapt to the current global crisis., Competing Interests: Conflict of interestThe authors have no conflict of interest., (© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2022.)

Background: While the hybridization of ecological knowledge has attracted substantial attention from researchers, the coexistence of local and allopathic medicinal traditions in literate societies widely exposed to centralized schooling and medical services has not yet been investigated. To this end, we studied the current and remembered local ethnomedical practices of Setos and neighboring Russians at the border with Estonia., Methods: During 2018-2019, we carried out 62 semi-structured interviews in the Pechorsky District of Pskov Oblast, NW Russia. For cross-border comparison, we utilized the data from 71 interviews carried out at the same time among Setos in Estonia. The Jaccard Similarity Index and qualitative comparison were used to analyze the data., Results: The study participants mentioned 819 uses of 112 taxa belonging to 54 families. More than two-thirds of the uses (565) were quoted by 36 Russian interviewees, while the remaining third (254) were quoted by 26 Seto interviewees, with the top 3 in both groups being Viburnum opulus, Rubus idaeus, and Plantago major. The Seto intraethnic similarity index was lower (0.43) than the interethnic similarity in Estonia (0.52) and comparable to the interethnic similarity in Russia (0.43). Setos in Russia and local Russians rely more on wild plants (86% and 80% of medicinal plants, respectively), while Setos in Estonia and Estonians show less preference to them (63% and 61%, respectively). Nevertheless, Setos tend to source wild plants available in their gardens (33% of plants for Setos in Estonia and 38% in Russia), while Russians prefer to source them in the wild (38%)., Conclusions: The preference of both groups in Russia for wild plants over cultivated and purchased plants was inspired by the overall plant literacy, access to nature, and one-to-many knowledge transfer favoring wild plants. Setos in Russia reported a narrower and more homogenous set of plants transferred vertically. However, due to atomization and the erosion of horizontal connections, there are singular plant uses among Setos that overlap with the local Russian set of medicinal plants and differ qualitatively from that of Setos in Estonia., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

An ethnobotanical field study focusing on traditional wild greens (WGs) was carried out in Central Crete, Greece. Through thirty-one semi-structured interviews, a total of fifty-five wild green plants and their culinary uses and linguistic labels were documented; they were mostly consumed boiled ( vrasta ) or fried ( tsigariasta ), as a filling for homemade pies. Comparison with some Greek historical data of the 19th and 20th centuries showed that WGs have remained resilient and are still present in the current Cretan diet. Cross-cultural comparison with the WGs gathered and consumed in other areas of the Central and Eastern Mediterranean demonstrated a remarkable diversity of Cretan WGs and important similarities with those consumed in Greek-speaking Cyprus, the Bodrum area of Turkey, coastal Syria, and Southern Italy. We discussed the cognitive categories linked to Chorta , as well as the possible origin of an original "bulk" of post-Neolithic food weeds that could have spread from the Fertile Crescent westwards across the Mediterranean basin over a few millennia. The current study represents a crucial effort to document and preserve the bio-cultural gastronomic heritage of Chorta and it is advisable that both biology and history scholars, as well as policy makers, pay needed attention to the WGs of the Cretan and Mediterranean diet.

Works on historical ethnobotany can help shed light on past plant uses and humankind's relationships with the environment. We analyzed medicinal plant uses from the historical regions of Livonia and Courland in Northeast Europe based on three studies published within the 19th century by medical doctors researching local ethnomedicine. The sources were manually searched, and information extracted and entered into a database. In total, there were 603 detailed reports of medicinal plant use, which refer to 219 taxa belonging to 69 families and one unidentified local taxon. Dominant families were Asteraceae (14%), Solanaceae (7%), Rosaceae (6%), and Apiaceae (5%). The majority of use reports were attributed to the treatment of four disease categories: digestive (24%), skin (22%), respiratory (11%), and general (11%). The small overlapping portion (14 taxa mentioned by all three authors and another 27 taxa named by two authors) contained a high proportion of taxa (46%) mentioned in Dioscorides, which were widespread during that period in scholarly practice. Despite the shared flora, geographical vicinity, and culturally similar backgrounds, the medicinal use of plants in historical Courland and Livonia showed high biocultural diversity and reliance on wild taxa. We encourage researchers to study and re-evaluate the historical ethnobotanical literature and provide some suggestions on how to do this effectively.

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.

Presently, collecting data through citizen science (CS) is increasingly being used in botanical, zoological and other studies. However, until now, ethnobotanical studies have underused CS data collection methods. This study analyses the results of the appeal organized by the physician Dr. Mihkel Ostrov (1863-1940), which can be considered the first-ever internationally known systematic example of ethnopharmacological data collection involving citizens. We aim to understand what factors enhanced or diminished the success of the collaboration between Ostrov and the citizens of that time. The reliability of Ostrov's collection was enhanced by the herbarium specimens (now missing) used in the identification of vernacular names. The collection describes the use of 65 species from 27 genera. The timing of its collection coincided with not only a national awakening and recently obtained high level of literacy but also the activation of civil society, people's awareness of the need to collect folklore, the voluntary willingness of newspapers to provide publishing space and later to collect data, and the use of a survey method focusing on a narrow topic. While Ostrov's only means of communication with the public was through newspapers, today, with electronic options, social media can also be used.

Wild food plants (WFPs) have been an important source of human nutrition since ancient times, and it particularly revives when conventional food is not available due to emergency situations, such as natural disasters and conflicts. The war in Syria has entered 10 years since it started in 2011, and it has caused the largest war-related crises since World War II. Nearly 60% of the Syrian population (12.4 million people) are food-insecure. WFPs are already culturally important in the region, and may be supplementing local diets during this conflict. Our study aimed to uncover the conflict's effect on the use of WFPs and to know what species are consumed by local people during the current crisis. The fieldwork was carried out between March 2020 and March 2021 in the Tartus governorate located in the coastal region of Syria. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 50 participants (26 women and 24 men) distributed in 26 villages along the study area. We recorded the vernacular names, uses, plant parts used, modes of preparation and consumption, change in WFP use before and during the conflict, and informants' perceptions towards WFPs. We documented 75 wild food plant species used for food and drink. Almost two-thirds (64%) of informants reported an increase in their reliance on wild plants as a food source during the conflict. The species of Origanum syriacum , Rhus coriaria , Eryngium creticum , and Cichorium intybus were among the most quoted species by informants. Sleeq (steamed leafy vegetables), Zaatar (breakfast/dinner food), and Louf (soup) were the most popular wild plant-based dishes.

The lockdown caused by the coronavirus 2019 disease (COVID-19) has created a situation in which food availability is affected not only by the availability of money but also by the availability of food itself. On the basis of five pillars, including 1) supporting community-based farming, 2) defending small firms, 3) developing narratives on the high value of local food, 4) encouraging subsistence gardening and foraging in the wild, and 5) promoting local ecological and gastronomic knowledge, the essay points a way forward to attain greater sustainability and resilience of safe food chains that starts with reassessing the relevance of local food systems., Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed., (Copyright: © 2021 Sõukand R et al.)

The subject of food-medicines (foods ingested in order to obtain a therapeutic activity or to prevent diseases) is garnering increasing attention from both ethnobiologists and ethnopharmacologists as diet-related chronic diseases are one of the major problems resulting in a large proportion of deaths globally, which calls for interest from the scientific community to make sensible decisions in the field of food and medicine. In this regard, the current study is an important attempt at providing baseline data for developing healthy and curative food ingredients. This study aimed at recording the culinary and medicinal uses of wild food plants (WFPs) in the remote Mastuj Valley, located at the extreme north of Chitral District, Pakistan. An ethnobotanical survey was completed via 30 in-depth semi-structured interviews with local knowledge holders to record the food and medicinal uses of WFPs in the study area. A total of 43 WFPs were recorded, most of which were used as cooked vegetables and raw snacks. Leaves were the most frequently used plant part. A remarkable proportion (81%) of use reports for the recorded wild plant taxa were quoted as food-medicines or medicinal foods, while very few were reported as either food or medicines, without any relationship between uses in these two domains. Previous ethnomedicinal studies from nearby regions have shown that most of the recorded wild plants have been used as medicines, thus supporting the findings of the current study. A literature survey revealed that many of the reported medicinal uses (33%) for the quoted WFPs were not verifiable on PubMed as they have not been studied for their respective medicinal actions. We observed that most of the plants quoted here have disappeared from the traditional food and medicinal system, which may be attributed to the invasion of the food market and the prevalence of allopathic medicine. However, knowledge of these wild plants is still alive in memory, and women are the main holders of cultural knowledge as they use it to manage the cooking and processing of WFPs. Therefore, in this context, we strongly recommend the preservation of local biocultural heritage, promoted through future development and educational programs, which could represent a timely response to the loss of cultural and traditional knowledge.

Over the last century in the European context, animal production has been transformed by the dynamics of centralization and decentralization due to political and economic factors. These processes have influenced knowledge related to healing and ensuring the welfare of domestic animals. Therefore, our study aimed to document and compare current and past ethnoveterinary practices, and to identify trajectories in ethnoveterinary knowledge in study regions from both northern and southern Eastern Europe. In the summers of 2018 and 2019, we conducted 476 interviews, recording the use of 94 plant taxa, 67 of which were wild and 24 were cultivated. We documented 452 use reports, 24 of which were related to the improvement of the quality or quantity of meat and milk, while the other 428 involved ethnoveterinary practices for treating 10 domestic animal taxa. Cattle were the most mentioned target of ethnoveterinary treatments across all the study areas, representing about 70% of all use reports. Only four plant species were reported in five or more countries ( Artemisia absinthium, Hypericum spp., Linum usitatissimum, Quercus robur ). The four study regions located in Northern and Southern Eastern Europe did not present similar ethnoveterinary knowledge trajectories. Bukovinian mountain areas appeared to hold a living reservoir of ethnoveterinary knowledge, unlike the other regions. Setomaa (especially Estonian Setomaa) and Dzukija showed an erosion of ethnoveterinary knowledge with many uses reported in the past but no longer in use. The current richness of ethnoveterinary knowledge reported in Bukovina could have been developed and maintained through its peculiar geographical location in the Carpathian Mountains and fostered by the intrinsic relationship between the mountains and local pastoralists and by its unbroken continuity of management even during the Soviet era. Finally, our results show some patterns common to several countries and to the veterinary medicine promoted during the time of the Soviet Union. However, the Soviet Union and its centralized animal breeding system, resulted in a decline of ethnoveterinary knowledge as highly specialized veterinary doctors worked in almost every village. Future research should examine the complex networks of sources from where farmers derive their ethnoveterinary knowledge., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Mattalia, Belichenko, Kalle, Kolosova, Kuznetsova, Prakofjewa, Stryamets, Pieroni, Volpato and Sõukand.)

Local ecological knowledge (LEK), including but not limited to the use of wild food plants, plays a large role in sustainable natural resource management schemes, primarily due to the synergy between plants and people. There are calls for the study of LEK in culturally diverse areas due to a loss of knowledge, the active practice of utilizing wild plants in various parts of the world, and a decline in biodiversity. An ethnobotanical study in a border region of Latvia, characterised by diverse natural landscapes and people with deep spiritual attachments to nature, provided an opportunity for such insight, as well as the context to analyse wild food plant usages among different sociocultural groups, allowing us to explore the differences among these groups. Semi-structured interviews were carried out as part of a wider ethnobotanical field study to obtain information about wild food plants and their uses. The list of wild food plant uses, derived from 72 interviews, revealed a high level of homogenisation (in regards to knowledge) among the study groups, and that many local uses of wild food plants are still actively practiced. People did not gather plants as a recreational activity but rather as a source of diet diversification. The results provide evidence of the importance of safeguarding ecological and cultural diversity due to high local community dependency on natural resources.

An ethnobotanical field study focusing on traditional wild food botanical taxa was carried out in Kaniguram, South Waziristan, Pakistan, among Ormur (or Burki or Baraki) peoples, which represent a diasporic minority group, as well as among the surrounding Pashtuns. Through sixty semi-structured interviews, fifty-two wild food plants (taxa) were recorded, and they were primarily used raw as snacks and cooked as vegetables. Comparative analysis found a remarkable overlap of the quoted plant uses between the two studied groups, which may reflect complex socio-cultural adaptations Ormur speakers faced. Ormur people retain a rich knowledge of anthropogenic weeds and the phytonyms reveal important commonalities with Persian and Kurdish phytonyms, which may indicate their possible horticultural-driven human ecological origin from the Middle East. Some novel or rare food uses of Cirsium arvense , Nannorrhops ritchiana , Periploca aphylla , Perovskia atriplicifolia , Viscum album, Oxalis corniculata and Withania coagulans were documented. Since the Ormuri language represents a moribund language, still spoken by only a few thousand speakers in NW Pakistan and Afghanistan, it is recommended that the traditional bio-cultural and gastronomical heritage of this minority group be appropriately protected and bolstered in future rural development programs.

Recent ethnobotanical studies have raised the hypothesis that religious affiliation can, in certain circumstances, influence the evolution of the use of wild food plants, given that it shapes kinship relations and vertical transmission of traditional/local environmental knowledge. The local population living in Jhelum District, Punjab, Pakistan comprises very diverse religious and linguistic groups. A field study about the uses of wild food plants was conducted in the district. This field survey included 120 semi-structured interviews in 27 villages, focusing on six religious groups (Sunni and Shia Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, and Ahmadis). We documented a total of 77 wild food plants and one mushroom species which were used by the local population mainly as cooked vegetables and raw snacks. The cross-religious comparison among six groups showed a high homogeneity of use among two Muslim groups (Shias and Sunnis), while the other four religious groups showed less extensive, yet diverse uses, staying within the variety of taxa used by Islamic groups. No specific plant cultural markers (i.e., plants gathered only by one community) could be identified, although there were a limited number of group-specific uses of the shared plants. Moreover, the field study showed erosion of the knowledge among the non-Muslim groups, which were more engaged in urban occupations and possibly underwent stronger cultural adaption to a modern lifestyle. The recorded traditional knowledge could be used to guide future development programs aimed at fostering food security and the valorization of the local bio-cultural heritage.

Cross-border and cross-cultural ethnomedicine are novel ways to address the evolution of local ecological knowledge. As is widely acknowledged, ethnomedicinal knowledge is not static, but evolves according to several factors, including changes in ecological availability and socioeconomic conditions, and yet the effect of the political context on medicinal knowledge remains largely underexplored. Bukovina, a small region of Eastern Europe that has been divided by a border since the 1940s and is currently part of both Romania and Ukraine, represents a unique case study in which to address the impact of political contexts on ethnomedicinal knowledge. The aim of this study was to compare plant-based medicinal uses among Romanians living on the two sides of the Romanian-Ukrainian border. In addition, we performed cross-cultural and cross-border analysis with published data on the ethnomedicine of the neighboring ethnolinguistic group of Hutsuls. We conducted 59 semistructured interviews with conveniently selected Romanians living in both Romanian and Ukrainian Bukovina. We elicited preparations for treating different ailments and disorders by naming each part of the body. We also asked about the sources of this medicinal knowledge. We documented the medicinal use of 108 plant taxa belonging to 45 families. Fifty-four taxa were common to both Romanian communities; 20 were only found among Romanians living in Romania and 34 only among Romanians living in Ukraine. However, the number of recorded uses was higher among Romanians living in Romania, revealing that they make consistent use of local medicinal plants, and Romanians living in Ukrainian Bukovina use more taxa but less consistently. Comparison with the data published in our study on neighboring Hutsuls shows that medicinal knowledge is more homogeneous among Hutsuls and Romanians living in Ukraine, yet many similar uses were found among Romanian communities across the border. We argue that the 50 years during which Ukrainian Bukovina was part of the USSR resulted in the integration of standard pan-Soviet elements as evidenced by several plant uses common among the groups living in Ukraine yet not among Hutsuls and Romanians living in Romania., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Mattalia, Stryamets, Grygorovych, Pieroni and Sõukand.)

Socio-economic changes impact local ethnobotanical knowledge as much as the ecological ones. During an ethnobotanical field study in 2018-2019, we interviewed 25 Setos and 38 Russians in the Pechorsky District of Pskov Oblast to document changes in wild plant use within the last 70 years according to the current and remembered practices. Of the 71 botanical taxa reported, the most popular were Vaccinium vitis-idaea , Vaccinium oxycoccos , Vaccinium myrtillus , Betula spp., and Rumex acetosa . The obtained data was compared with that of 37 Setos and 35 Estonians interviewed at the same time on the other side of the border. Our data revealed a substantial level of homogeneity within the plants used by three or more people with 30 of 56 plants overlapping across all four groups. However, Seto groups are ethnobotanically closer to the dominant ethnic groups immediately surrounding them than they are to Setos across the border. Further study of minor ethnic groups in a post-Soviet context is needed, paying attention to knowledge transmission patterns.