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This historical study analyzes the little known practice of gathering food resources from rodent stores in Siberia, with comparative perspectives from northern Europe and North America. Until the 19th century, taking roots, tubers, corms, bulbs, seeds and nuts from rodent food stores was a widespread practice by several ethnic groups in Siberia to supplement their diets. Rodents in northern areas, for example the root vole (Microtus oeconomus), depend on a constant food supply and therefore collect large quantities of plants in their underground caches. Often, but not only during colder seasons, Siberian peoples collected these high-quality plant parts from the voles. Some plundered the stores completely, but others left food or other objects for the animals so that they would survive and gather more the following year. In the circumpolar area ceremonies were held, presenting the rodents with gifts that were valued in human society.

This interdisciplinary study discusses the vernacular phytonyms and other ethnobiological aspects of vegetation in the Loptuq (Loplik) habitat on the Lower Tarim River. This small Turkic-speaking group lived as fisher-foragers in the Lopnor (Lop Lake) area in East Turkestan, now the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China. Information about this unique group, and especially the folk knowledge of plants in the area, is scant. In 1900, Swedish explorer Sven Hedin collected plant voucher specimens for the Swedish Natural History Museum in Stockholm. He noted local names on herbarium labels, thus providing modern researchers a rare glimpse into the Loptuq world. As the traditional way of life is already lost and the Loptuq language almost extinct, every trace of the former culture is of significance when trying to understand the peculiarities of human habitats and survival in arid areas. The ethnobiological analysis can further contribute to other fields, such as climate change, and define the place of the Loptuq on the linguistic and cultural map of Central Asia.

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Toponyms and hydronyms encode important information about human perceptions of the environment in a specific context. This article discusses the Loptuq, a group of Turkic-speakers, who until the 1950s lived as fishers-foragers at the Lower Tarim River, Eastern Turkestan (contemporary Xinjiang, China), and their use of common reed (Phragmites australis) as an example for the close connection between language, culture, social relations, economic activities, and human perceptions about the surrounding environment. Operating in lakes and swamps for their economic activities (fishing, hunting, foraging, and occasional transport), exploring and observing vegetation and animal life, the Loptuq developed and transmitted information through naming their habitat. Today both their habitat and the earlier knowledge have disappeared, but the perceptions and uses of resources can at least partly be reconstructed through foreign explorers’ narratives and field notes.