Historical Ethnobotany: Interpreting the Old Records.

For centuries, knowledge about the use of plants has been collected, published, or simply left in archives [...].

Bitter Is Better: Wild Greens Used in the Blue Zone of Ikaria, Greece.

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.

Boundaries Are Blurred: Wild Food Plant Knowledge Circulation across the Polish-Lithuanian-Belarusian Borderland.

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.

Promotion of Wild Food Plant Use Diversity in the Soviet Union, 1922-1991.

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.

The Appeal of Ethnobotanical Folklore Records: Medicinal Plant Use in Setomaa, Räpina and Vastseliina Parishes, Estonia (1888-1996).

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.

Control of foot-and-mouth disease in a closed society: A case study of Soviet Estonia.

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.

The nexus between traditional foraging and its sustainability: a qualitative assessment among a few selected Eurasian case studies.

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.

Green pharmacy at the tips of your toes: medicinal plants used by Setos and Russians of Pechorsky District, Pskov Oblast (NW Russia).

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.

Diverse in Local, Overlapping in Official Medical Botany: Critical Analysis of Medicinal Plant Records from the Historic Regions of Livonia and Courland in Northeast Europe, 1829-1895.

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.

Why the ongoing occupation of Ukraine matters to ethnobiology.

Ethnobiology and ethnomedicine investigate the continuously changing complex and inextricable relations among culture, nature, and health. Since the emergence of modern ethnobiology a few decades ago, its essence and mission have been the study of biocultural diversities and the centers of its inquiries have been and are local communities and their co-evolutionary interrelationships between natural environments and social systems. At the core of ethnobiologists' work there are not only conceptualizations of and reflections on others' views about nature and the universe, but also a robust commitment to advocacy in defense of these assemblages of local ecological knowledge, practices, and beliefs (LEK). Homogenization processes and therefore erosion of LEK have occurred throughout history in different ways: from colonialism to industrialization, and from financialization to globalization; however, we cannot forget the role played by centripetal states and even dictatorships in this process, nor the associated political ideology of nationalism, which has often elicited and justified policies aimed at standardizing diversities within state borders. Our research groups have been working since eight years together with local communities in Ukrainian rural areas and documented a remarkable erosion of LEK during the Soviet times, yet an extraordinary surviving biocultural diversity occurs; the ongoing military occupation of Ukraine could further threaten this heritage. While citizens' attention now should be on effectively supporting those who are experiencing hardships during this traumatic time, ethnobiologists will be called hopefully soon to directly participate in rebuilding the biocultural "cobwebs" damaged by the military operations.

Early Citizen Science Action in Ethnobotany: The Case of the Folk Medicine Collection of Dr. Mihkel Ostrov in the Territory of Present-Day Estonia, 1891-1893.

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.

Homogenisation of Biocultural Diversity: Plant Ethnomedicine and Its Diachronic Change in Setomaa and Võromaa, Estonia, in the Last Century.

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.

Local ecological knowledge and folk medicine in historical Estonia, Livonia, Courland and Galicia in Northeastern Europe, 1805-1905.

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.

Multifarious Trajectories in Plant-Based Ethnoveterinary Knowledge in Northern and Southern Eastern Europe.

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.

Active Wild Food Practices among Culturally Diverse Groups in the 21st Century across Latgale, Latvia.

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.

Language of Administration as a Border: Wild Food Plants Used by Setos and Russians in Pechorsky District of Pskov Oblast, NW Russia.

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.

Building a safety buffer for European food security: the role of small-scale food production and local ecological and gastronomic knowledge in light of COVID-19.

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.

The name to remember: Flexibility and contextuality of preliterate folk plant categorization from the 1830s, in Pernau, Livonia, historical region on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea.

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE: Research on the folk categorization of nature in preliterate societies in Europe is complicated due to the fragmentation of the information available and is rarely undertaken. Yet the data is valuable and may provide, in certain circumstances, important insights, if not into novel medicines, then into the historical logic of selection and memorisation of plants useful from a medicinal perspective. AIMS OF THE STUDY: We aim to understand the ethnobotany of a preliterate society by analysing the emic (derived from people) perspective on nature-related culture of one of Europe's smaller nations, whose written language and culture was shaped in the 18th-19th centuries by other, larger nations of Europe, and thus from the etic (academic) perspective. We attempt to identify how folk categorization is reflected in the relationships between plant names and uses and to map the structure of those relationships. DATA AND METHODS: We base our analysis on one of the oldest ethnobotanical manuscripts and herbaria of the Baltic governorates, compiled in 1831 by an amateur botanist, Baltic German Pastor Johann Heinrich Rosenplänter (1782-1846), which was derived from conversations with his parishioners from the tiny Pärnu parish. The historical dataset was critically analysed from an ethnobotanical perspective in light of recent identifications of the herbarium specimens. RESULTS: Although the Rosenplänter collection is fragmentary, the logic of plant categorization by non-literate peasants at that time is clearly seen in the data. Plants preserved in the herbarium were predominantly used for ethno-medicinal, food or ethno-veterinary purposes, such as treating chronic skin and joint diseases as well as severe acute diseases in humans and animals. Among 129 folk taxa analysed, more than one third had apparent purpose-related plant names providing clear links to their use, whereas a few multifunctional plants had several names reflecting diverse uses. For example, Hypericum spp., which was used in three different ways, had three semantically distinct names. However, among the plants that Rosenplänter collected, there were also some that were simply named and described by people but lacked any usability data (e.g., Trollius europaeus), meaning that use as such was not the primary criterion for recognising a plant. The web-like structure of preliterate thinking in plant-related knowledge reveals a deep relationship with the environment and the interpretation of new elements through familiar natural objects. CONCLUSION: Our findings demonstrate that historical ethnobotanical data, if thoughtfully analysed, can be used not only for comparative purposes, but also for understanding the logic of preliterate thinking. We encourage future in-depth studies of historical ethnobotanical data in Europe in order to understand the relationship between nature and culture of native European populations.

Re-written narrative: transformation of the image of Ivan-chaj in Eastern Europe.

The aim of this study was to understand the role of viral narratives and the involvement of social media into the invention of tradition. We took as an example the recently highly promoted Ivan-chaj, a tea made from the fermented leaves of willowherb, a plant little known and used in Europe until a few years ago. Relying on a wide variety of sources circulating on the Internet (videos, various texts and visuals) and robust empirical field research results, we used mixed methods to analyze this specific case in order to understand if people adopt new teachings and if their acceptance leads to practical output. The results showed that the new teachings spread quickly, supported by narratives based on a wide variety of interaction points that viralized the message, also causing an economic impact. It is clear that the change of status and the economic success that Ivan-chaj now enjoys is due to the virality of the narrative, which has reshaped the image of Ivan-chaj from an "outcast" imitation and tea substitute into the national healthy drink. Having appeared in Russia, mostly as a Russian cultural marker, the narrative went viral and spread beyond its borders where neighbors have tried in turn to embrace Ivan-chaj as their own cultural marker by proclaiming it a local tradition. Indeed, narratives regarding Ivan-chaj spread easily in countries sharing some linguistic, historical and/or cultural elements with Russia (via the nexus of the Soviet Union).

Devil Is in the Details: Use of Wild Food Plants in Historical Võromaa and Setomaa, Present-Day Estonia.

Biodiversity needs to be preserved to ensure food security. Border zones create high but vulnerable biocultural diversity. Through reviewing scattered historical data and documenting the current use of wild food plants among people currently living in historical Setomaa and Võromaa parishes, we aimed to identify cross-cultural differences and diachronic changes as well as the role borders have played on the local use of wild plants. The Seto have still preserved their distinctive features either by consciously opposing others or by maintaining more historical plant uses. People historically living in Setomaa and Võromaa parishes have already associated the eating of wild plants with famine food in the early 20th century, yet it was stressed more now by the Seto than by Estonians. Loss of Pechory as the center of attraction in the region when the border was closed in the early 1990s brought about a decline in the exchange of knowledge as well as commercial activities around wild food plants. National support for businesses in the area today and the popularity of a healthy lifestyle have introduced new wild food plant applications and are helping to preserve local plant-specific uses in the area.