"But how true that is, I do not know": the influence of written sources on the medicinal use of fungi across the western borderlands of the former Soviet Union.

Fungi have been used for medicinal purposes for many centuries. This study, based on 35 historical written sources and 581 in-depth semi-structured interviews from eight countries in the western borderlands of the former Soviet Union, investigates the medicinal use of fungi by local communities. We compared the taxa and uses obtained from fieldwork and historical sources with works that advocated fungi use within Soviet herbals, representing the centralised medical system. During fieldwork, we identified eight locally used fungi and one lichen. The highest numbers of medicinal uses were documented in Russia, Estonia and Ukraine. Studies published before the Soviet era listed 21 fungal taxa and one lichen species used in the study region. However, only six of these taxa were mentioned as used by people in our field studies (Amanita muscaria, Boletus edulis, Lycoperdon, Morchella, Phallus impudicus and Cetraria islandica). Notably, these same six taxa were consistently endorsed in Soviet herbals. Of the remaining three taxa recorded in the fieldwork, none were mentioned in historical written sources. However, they were promoted either in Soviet herbals (Inonotus obliquus, Kombucha) or later popular publications (Cantharellus cibarius). This highlights the significant influence of written sources on the use of fungi for medicinal purposes within the studied local communities.

Cultural vs. State Borders: Plant Foraging by Hawraman and Mukriyan Kurds in Western Iran.

Plant foraging is a millennia-old activity still practiced by many people in the Middle East, particularly in the Fertile Crescent region, where several socioeconomic, ecological, and cultural factors shape this practice. This study seeks to understand the drivers of plant foraging in this complex region characterized by highly diverse linguistic, religious, and cultural groups. Our study aims to document the wild plants used by Kurds in Western Iran, identify similarities and differences among Hawraman and Mukriyan Kurdish groups in Iran, and compare our findings with a previous study on the Hawramani in Iraq. Forty-three semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted in Kurdish villages of Western Iran. The results revealed the use of 44 wild food plant taxa, their preparation, and culinary uses. Among the reported taxa, 28 plant taxa were used by Mukriyani, and 33 by Hawramani. The study revealed a significant difference between the Hawraman and Mukriyan regions in Iran, whereas there is a high similarity between Hawramani Kurds in Iran and Iraq. We found that the invisible cultural border carries more weight than political divisions, and this calls for a paradigm shift in how we perceive and map the distribution of ethnobotanical knowledge.

Ethnobotanical contributions to global fishing communities: a review.

BACKGROUND: Ethnobotanical knowledge about the role of plants in fisheries provides valuable ecological information vital for sustainable management of local resources; however, it is diluted and understudied globally. This literature review aims to map the knowledge of plant use within traditional fishing communities. METHODS: Through the PRISMA method, we identified and selected 34 articles reporting the use of plants in fisheries, and including 344 taxa of plants and algae. Uses of plants and algae were grouped into different categories. RESULTS: In the novel categorization of fishery-related uses we proposed, the most mentioned were for fishing and building/repair of fishing artifacts and habitat-related uses, while the records of plants related to fiber uses, providing aid in fishing management and species causing problems, were among the least mentioned. Semi-structured interview is most commonly used with local resource users, especially fishery experts, in exploring perceptions on plant use within traditional fishing communities. Diversity was high in all the recorded families, but most were reported locally. CONCLUSION: Ethnobotanical studies with fishers are not common in the documented literature but they provide a large number of use reports. On the basis this review, in most of the world, the information is of a casual and sporadic nature. Fishers can provide information on aquatic plants and algae that create problems and aid in fishing management, which are crucial in understanding the ecosystem of a region experiencing environmental challenges. This knowledge is greatly understudied globally and undergoing a rapid decline, as highlighted in several of the reviewed articles. Thus, further systematic research on fishery-related uses of plants by fisherfolk is needed considering its potential contribution to the sustainable management of fishery resources.

Temporal Changes in the Use of Wild Medicinal Plants in Trentino-South Tyrol, Northern Italy.

Mountain regions are fragile ecosystems and often host remarkably rich biodiversity, and thus they are especially under threat from ongoing global changes. Located in the Eastern Alps, Trentino-South Tyrol is bioculturally diverse but an understudied region from an ethnobotanical perspective. We explored the ethnomedicinal knowledge of the area from a cross-cultural and diachronic perspective by conducting semi-structured interviews with 22 local inhabitants from Val di Sole (Trentino) and 30 from Überetsch-Unterland (South Tyrol). Additionally, we compared the results with ethnobotanical studies conducted in Trentino and South Tyrol over 25 years ago. The historical comparison revealed that about 75% of the plants currently in use were also used in the past in each study region. We argue that the adoption of "new" medicinal species could have occurred through printed and social media and other bibliographical sources but may also be due to limitations in conducting the comparison (i.e., different taxonomic levels and different methodologies). The inhabitants of Val di Sole and Überetsch-Unterland have shared most medicinal plants over the past few decades, yet the most used species diverge (perhaps due to differences in local landscapes), and in South Tyrol, people appear to use a higher number of medicinal plants, possibly because of the borderland nature of the area.

Disadvantaged Economic Conditions and Stricter Border Rules Shape Afghan Refugees' Ethnobotany: Insights from Kohat District, NW Pakistan.

The study of migrants' ethnobotany can help to address the diverse socio-ecological factors affecting temporal and spatial changes in local ecological knowledge (LEK). Through semi-structured and in-depth conversations with ninety interviewees among local Pathans and Afghan refugees in Kohat District, NW Pakistan, one hundred and forty-five wild plant and mushroom folk taxa were recorded. The plants quoted by Afghan refugees living inside and outside the camps tend to converge, while the Afghan data showed significant differences with those collected by local Pakistani Pathans. Interviewees mentioned two main driving factors potentially eroding folk plant knowledge: (a) recent stricter border policies have made it more difficult for refugees to visit their home regions in Afghanistan and therefore to also procure plants in their native country; (b) their disadvantaged economic conditions have forced them to engage more and more in urban activities in the host country, leaving little time for farming and foraging practices. Stakeholders should foster the exposure that refugee communities have to their plant resources, try to increase their socio-economic status, and facilitate both their settling outside the camps and their transnational movement for enhancing their use of wild plants, ultimately leading to improvements in their food security and health status.

Traditional Knowledge Evolution over Half of a Century: Local Herbal Resources and Their Changes in the Upper Susa Valley of Northwest Italy.

Susa Valley, located in the Italian Western Alps, has served as a meeting point for cultural, spiritual, and commercial exchange for a long period of history. The valley's role as one of the main connecting routes between south and southwestern Europe resulted in its acquisition of a rich traditional ecological knowledge. However, like other Italian mountainous valleys, this valley has suffered from abandonment and depopulation in the past 50 years. Our study aims to investigate the current ethnobotanical medicinal knowledge in the valley and to compare our findings with a study conducted over 50 years ago in the same area. In 2018, we conducted 30 in-depth semi-structured interviews on medicinal plants and food-medicines used in the Susa Valley. We documented 36 species, of which 21 species were used for medical purposes and 15 species were used as food-medicine. The comparison with the previous study on medicinal herbs conducted in 1970 in the valley demonstrated a significant decrease in both the knowledge and use of medicinal plants, which could be attributed to socioeconomic, cultural, and possibly environmental changes that occurred in the past half-century. Our study highlights several promising species for future use as nutraceuticals, food, and medicinal products, such as Taraxacum officinale, Urtica dioica, and Artemisia genipi.

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.

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.

"Cow Healers Use It for Both Horses and Cattle": The Rise and Fall of the Ethnoveterinary Use of Peucedanum ostruthium (L.) Koch (fam. Apiaceae) in Sweden.

Masterwort, Peucedanum ostruthium (L.) Koch, is an Apiaceae species originally native to the mountain areas of central and southern Europe. Written sources show that it was used in northern Europe. This study explores the cultivation history of masterwort and its past use in Sweden. Although only few details are known about the history of this taxon, it represents a cultural relict plant of an intentionally introduced species known in Sweden as early as the Middle Ages. In Sweden, the masterwort was mainly used as an ethnoveterinary herbal remedy from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. However, medicinal manuals, pharmacopoeias and some ethnographical records indicate that it was once also used in remedies for humans. Today, this species remains as a living biocultural heritage in rural areas, especially on the surviving shielings, which were once used as mountain pastures in Dalecarlia, and at former crofts that were inhabited by cattle owners in the forest areas of southern Sweden.

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.