Abstract
In the contemporary reality of globalization and urbanization in Bulgaria, traditional empiric ethnobotanical knowledge is disappearing. The aim of our study was to check the attitude of a random sample of people to the herbs and the traditional way of healing: 1) to find out which herbs are the most popular in Bulgaria; 2) what is their most popular application; 3) to study the distribution of negative or positive attitudes to the traditional use of medicinal plants according to age and gender of Bulgarian people. In total, 77 plant species (including the ones in the formula combinations) were mentioned during the study. They belong to 38 families. The most important families are Lamiaceae, Rosaceae, Asteraceae and the plants which most commonly referred to as “Granny’s cure” were Hypericum perforatum, Cotinus coggigria, Plantago major, Sempervivum sp. div., Calendula officinalis, Melissa officinalis, Allium sativum, Aesculus hippocastanum, Matricaria chamomilla and Cornus mass. The greatest number of herbs were the ones used to treat disorders of central nervous system (CNS), bones, skin, gastro-intestinal and respiratory system. Key words: Traditional healing, medicinal plants, remedial properties.
Highlights
In the contemporary reality of globalization and urbanization in Bulgaria, traditional empiric ethnobotanical knowledge is disappearing
The aim of our study was to check the attitude of a random sample of people to the herbs and the traditional way of healing: 1) to find out which herbs are the most popular in Bulgaria; 2) what is their most popular application; 3) to study the distribution of negative or positive attitudes to the traditional use of medicinal plants according to age and gender of Bulgarian people
The aim of our study was to investigate the attitude of a random sample of people to the herbs and the traditional way of healing: 1) to find out which herbs are the most popular among the population of Bulgaria; 2) what is their most popular application; 3) to study the distribution of the negative or positive attitudes to the traditional use of medicinal plants according to the age and gender of Bulgarian people
Summary
In the contemporary reality of globalization and urbanization in Bulgaria (worldwide tendency), traditional empiric ethnobotanical knowledge is disappearing. More often we find that when we question rural people they say, “There used to be a woman, who knew all about medicinal plants, but she passed away”. Few of the women experts were famous but many of them had a good general knowledge of the subject. This is not surprising, because the mother is, usually, the parent who would deal with most common ailments and illnesses. Despite that discouraging tendency observed in ethnobotanical researches during the last decade, we have found several examples of traditional empiric data which had not been documented and so we were inspired to see what more had been overlooked
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