Abstract
This paper is an ethnobotanical review of wild edible plants gathered for consumption from the 19th century to the present day, within the present borders of Slovakia. Twenty-four sources (mainly ethnographic) documenting the culinary use of wild plants were analysed. The use of 106 species (over 3% of the Slovak flora) has been recorded. Nowadays most of them are no longer used, or used rarely, apart from a few species of wild fruits. The most frequently used plants include the fruits of <em>Rubus idaeus</em>, <em>Fragaria </em>spp., <em>Rubus </em>subgenus <em>Rubus</em>, <em>Vaccinium myrtillus</em>, <em>V. vitis-idaea</em>, <em>Fagus sylvatica</em>, <em>Corylus avellana</em>, <em>Prunus spinosa</em>, <em>Pyrus </em>spp., <em>Malus </em>spp., <em>Crataegus </em>spp. and the leaves of <em>Urtica dioica</em>, <em>Rumex acetosa</em>, Chenopodiaceae species, <em>Cardamine amara</em>, <em>Glechoma </em>spp., <em>Taraxacum </em>spp. and <em>Oxalis acetosella</em>. The most commonly used wild food taxa are nearly identical to those used in Poland, and the same negative association of wild vegetables with famine exists in Slovakia, resulting in their near complete disappearance from the present-day diet.
Highlights
The growing interest in the use of wild food plant resources nowadays stems from efforts to find alternatives to the industrialization and globalization of agriculture and to provide food security in times of agricultural crisis
Within the last two decades, detailed ethnobotanical studies have been carried out in European countries to preserve the disappearing traditions of wild food plant use. Such studies were performed for instance on the Iberian Peninsula (e.g. [2,3,4,5,6,7,8]), in Italy [9,10,11,12,13], Greece [13,14], Turkey [15,16], Bosnia and Herzegovina [17], Albania [18] and Austria [19]
Publications used in the review The documentation of traditions of plant use in Slovakia was begun by a distinguished scholar, Jozef Ľudovit Holuby (1836–1923) in the 19th century
Summary
The growing interest in the use of wild food plant resources nowadays stems from efforts to find alternatives to the industrialization and globalization of agriculture and to provide food security in times of agricultural crisis. Within the last two decades, detailed ethnobotanical studies have been carried out in European countries to preserve the disappearing traditions of wild food plant use. Such studies were performed for instance on the Iberian Peninsula The phenomenon of foraging in Europe has been, studied from different perspectives for centuries. It was present in economic plant encyclopaedias [20,21,22,23] and later appeared as the subject of ethnographic studies. The other country is Estonia, where a large number of ethnographic elaborations and queries is availableand it has been recently synthesized [30]
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