This paper is an historical review of ethnobotanical notes about wild and cultivated edible plants collected through texts from the end of the 18th century (1796) to the first decades of the 20th century (1930) in the area of Albania under European Turkey, which included parts of today North Macedonia and Kosovo. Albania is an Eastern European country, which has been little studied from historical ethnobotany point of view. For this reason, this paper is focused on foreign authors' works containing data on the use of plants for economic, medicinal, food purposes, and discussing mythological, religious and magical explanations for them. The study is not intended to be an exhaustive review of all materials on this subject, but includes the texts known to us that contain ethnobotanical knowledge. Further scientific research can be carried out in other studies on historical ethnobotany not only by foreign authors but also by Albanians.

The plants are integral part of human life for food, medicine or other uses. The language of a speech community reflects the creative ability of its members, so the vernacular plant names reflect semantically the way how they perceive and imagine specific features of plants. In this context, the process of naming plants in Albanian is codified by transferring the meaning through metaphor and metonymy, or word formation (derivation and composition). The plant names often describe some characteristic features of the plant itself or of its part, in which the communities are interested. The aim of this study is to find and explain the plant features on whose basis plants are named in Albanian language, to point out the reasons of naming plants and relationships between the two codes: the human and animal body and plants, and more specifically, reflections of genitalia code and gender message in the plant names in Albanian folk mentality.