Multi-functionality of the few: current and past uses of wild plants for food and healing in Liubań region, Belarus

Abstract

BackgroundThis study examined the use of wild plants in the food, medicinal and veterinary areas within a small territory limited to one village council in the Liubań district of Belarus. The objectives of the research were to document the current and past uses of wild plants in this region for food and human/animal medication; to analyse the food, medicinal and veterinary areas in the context of wild plants; and to qualitatively compare the results with relevant publications concerning the wild food plants of Belarus.MethodsFieldwork was carried out as a practical part of a development cooperation project in May 2016 in 11 villages of the Liubań district. One hundred thirty-four respondents were selected randomly. Information about local uses of wild plants was obtained via semi-structured interviews and the folk-history method. Interview records were digitalized and the data structured in Detailed Use Records (DUR), which were divided into food, medicinal and veterinary areas and then analysed to ascertain local perceptions.ResultsA total of 2252 DUR of wild plants were recorded. Eighty-eight wild plant taxa belonging to 45 plant families were used across all three areas. Of these, 58 taxa were used in the food, 74 in the medicinal and 23 in the veterinary areas. A relatively high percentage of the taxa were used in both the food and medicinal areas (55%) and an even greater percentage in both the medicinal and veterinary areas (87%). Comparison with earlier research on wild food plants shows the considerable difference among seldom-mentioned taxa or uses, showing possible regional differences despite the homogenization of the population during the Soviet era.ConclusionsAs the majority of taxa with overlapping uses belonged to the most utilized plants, there appears to be clear a tendency to use plants in several different areas once they are brought into the home. This may be due to the need to maximize the versatility of limited resources. While the number of wild taxa used is relatively high, the mean number of taxa used per person is quite low, which indicates the relatively minor importance of wild plants in the respective areas in the study region. The low importance of snacks signals that unintended contact with nature has been lost.

Forest as Stronghold of Local Ecological Practice: Currently Used Wild Food Plants in Polesia, Northern Ukraine

“…Similarly, we recorded only 35 taxa used among Boikos (Pieroni and Sõukand 2017) and 40 taxa among Hutsuls (Sõkand and Pieroni 2016). It is also higher than the number of taxa recorded in areas neighboring Ukraine: 44 taxa used by Ukrainians in Maramures (Łuczaj et al 2015) and 58 taxa used in central Belarus (Sõukand et al 2017). Yet it is important to note that a large number of the taxa (30) are used only in the Chernihiv region, whereas the number of taxa used solely in the Ljubeciv region is clearly comparable with neighboring regions.…”

“…changes to state borders, Sõukand and Pieroni 2016), ethnicity (Pieroni and Quave 2005), religion (Bellia and Pieroni 2016;Pieroni et al 2011), socioeconomic conditions (Stryamets et al 2015) and remoteness (Bussmann et al 2016) were found to have a strong influence on the use of wild food plants. The use of wild food plants, compared with the use of medicinal plants, is more homogenously distributed within a population (Sõukand et al 2017) and more evenly shared by different ethnic groups inhabiting the same ecological niche (Quave and Pieroni 2015) or the same ethnos divided by a state border (Sõukand and Pieroni 2016). Uses of wild food plants are mainly learned during childhood and nowadays are often subject to abandonment rather than valorization (Kalle and Sõukand 2016;Reyes-García et al 2015).…”

“…The current use of wild food plants in Ukraine (as well as neighboring regions of the Russian Federation and Belarus) remains a little-studied subject, limited to only five field-work based publications Pieroni and Sõukand 2017;Styramets et al 2015;Sõukand and Pieroni 2016;Sõukand et al 2017), two recently published studies based on archival sources (Kujawska et al 2015;Łuczaj 2008) and the pionering work of Moszyński (1928) in a Polesia not yet divided by borders. Polesia is an importan region because of its relative isolation and borderland status.…”

Fischer’s Plants in folk beliefs and customs: a previously unknown contribution to the ethnobotany of the Polish-Lithuanian-Belarusian borderland

“…These were mainly the unpublished questionnaires of Józef Rostafiński from 1883, as well as a handwritten monograph of Michał Fedorowski from the same period [16], as well as contemporary field work data by some of the co-authors of the paper. The contemporary studies dedicated to wild plants used as food, medicine and for animal wellbeing were performed recently in Liubań district, Minsk region by Sǒukand and collegues [19]. …”

Beyond Turf and Lawn: Poaceae in This Age of Climate Change

“…Though undomesticated, the harvesting of wild grass seeds has occurred on all inhabited continents [37], and persists right up to the present day in many parts of the world, even though seed collection and processing can be challenging for various reasons such as widespread distribution paterns with low abundance, shatering, lodging or competition with more dominant species. People turn to gathering wild grass seeds for various reasons-as a basic survival strategy to counter famine, poverty or economic depression, to maintaining traditional agricultural practices, preserving the traditional recreational or cultural activities of gathering of local wild food and plant medicines [29,[38][39][40], or for ecosystem restoration and biodiversity conservation purposes [41][42][43].…”