The Ethnobotany of Poland has been the subject of several

ethnobotanical Ethnobotany is the study of a region's plants and their practical uses through the traditional knowledge of a local culture and people. An ethnobotanist thus strives to document the local customs involving the practical uses of local flora for m ...

surveys since the 19th century studying the role of wild plants in Polish folk culture and contemporary rural communities. The first seminary on ethnobotany in Poland was held in

Kolbuszowa Kolbuszowa ( yi, קאלבאסאוו) is a small town in south-eastern Poland, with 9,190 inhabitants (02.06.2009). Situated in the Sandomierz Forest in the Subcarpathian Voivodship (since 1999), it is the capital of Kolbuszowa County. Kolbuszo ...

in 1980 about the role of plants in Polish folk culture and other countries were discussed too.

Background

Poland has been described as an ''aherbous'' or ''herbophobous'' nation due to greens mostly being consumed only when other foods were unavailable. Moszyński attributed this to good farming conditions in a mostly agrarian culture with limited use for wild plants. According to Moszyński, local populations in Poland were familiar with only a few

taxa In biology, a taxon (back-formation from ''taxonomy''; plural taxa) is a group of one or more populations of an organism or organisms seen by taxonomists to form a unit. Although neither is required, a taxon is usually known by a particular nam ...

like ''

Urtica ''Urtica'' is a genus of flowering plants in the family Urticaceae. Many species have stinging hairs and may be called nettles or stinging nettles, although the latter name applies particularly to ''Urtica dioica''. ''Urtica'' species are food f ...

'' and ''

Chenopodium ''Chenopodium'' is a genus of numerous species of perennial or annual herbaceous flowering plants known as the goosefoots, which occur almost anywhere in the world. It is placed in the family Amaranthaceae in the APG II system; older classifica ...

''.

Surveys

The earliest known ethnobotanical survey about Poland was conducted by

Józef Rostafiński Józef Tomasz Rostafiński (14 August 1850 – 5 May 1928) was a Polish botanist. Life He was born in Warsaw, and studied in (1866–1869), Jena, Halle, and Strasbourg, where he achieved his PhD before being appointed lecturer at the unive ...

, who investigated all aspects of ethnobotany including medical, culinary and

dye A dye is a colored substance that chemically bonds to the substrate to which it is being applied. This distinguishes dyes from pigments which do not chemically bind to the material they color. Dye is generally applied in an aqueous solution an ...

making. He asked participants about green vegetables (''Zieleniny''): "Do local people gather herbs in spring to used in soups, particularly in famine years, and these herbs are?" The responses he received included ''Urtica'' (''pokrzywa żegawka''), ''

Glechoma ''Glechoma'' is a genus of flowering plants in the mint family, Lamiaceae, first described for modern science in 1753. It is distributed in northern Asia and Europe with a center of diversity in Asia, especially China. One species is naturalized ...

'' (''Bluszczyk kurdybanek''), ''

Rumex The docks and sorrels, genus ''Rumex'', are a genus of about 200 species of annual, biennial, and perennial herbs in the buckwheat family, Polygonaceae. Members of this genus are very common perennial herbs with a native almost worldwide distribu ...

'' (''szczaw''), '' Heracleum'', and ''

Aegopodium podagraria ''Aegopodium podagraria'', commonly called ground elder, is a species of flowering plant in the carrot family Apiaceae that grows in shady places. The name "ground elder" comes from the superficial similarity of its leaves and flowers to those o ...

''. Green vegetables from around 58

(43

genera Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nomenclat ...

) appear but half are only used when food is scare.

Sorrel Sorrel (''Rumex acetosa''), also called common sorrel or garden sorrel, is a perennial herbaceous plant in the family Polygonaceae. Other names for sorrel include spinach dock and narrow-leaved dock ('dock' being a common name for the genus '' ...

is among the most common, with data from 1948 describing the preservation of leaves for the winter. ''

'' and ''

Atriplex ''Atriplex'' () is a plant genus of about 250 species, known by the common names of saltbush and orache (; also spelled orach). It belongs to the subfamily Chenopodioideae of the family Amaranthaceae ''s.l.''. The genus is quite variable and w ...

'' species were eaten fried, blanched or boiled, mixed with

potatoes The potato is a starchy food, a tuber of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'' and is a root vegetable native to the Americas. The plant is a perennial in the nightshade family Solanaceae. Wild potato species can be found from the southern United ...

dairy A dairy is a business enterprise established for the harvesting or processing (or both) of animal milk – mostly from cows or buffaloes, but also from goats, sheep, horses, or camels – for human consumption. A dairy is typically located on ...

. The perception of survey respondents was generally that it was a wartime food or mostly eaten by the poor, and its consumption is rare in modern times.

References

{{Reflist

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

Polish folk culture