Home Gardens as a Source of Medicinal, Herbal and Food Preparations: Modern and Historical Approaches in Lithuania

Zivile Pranskuniene,Jurga Bernatoniene,Zenona Simaitiene,Roberta Bajoraite

doi:10.3390/app11219988

Zivile Pranskuniene, Jurga Bernatoniene + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/app11219988

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Abstract

The culture of home gardens in Lithuania comes from the deep traditions of agriculture. The purpose of this study was to collect and evaluate the ethnobotanical knowledge of medicinal plants grown in Tauragė District home gardens and to compare it with archival sources. A field survey was conducted from July 2019 to October 2020 in the Tauragė District, and the target group consisted of 27 respondents. The data obtained during the research were compared with the unpublished work of E. Šimkūnaitė, dated 1948. During the research, 100 cultivated plant species were recorded and assigned to 36 plant families (76 plant species and 38 plant families in the archival source, respectively). Many of the species grown earlier/at present in home gardens were used without EMA approved medical indications and were based solely on folk knowledge and experience in medicine. Despite the wide network of pharmacies and well-available primary health care in Lithuania, the residents of Tauragė District still grow medicinal plants in their home gardens for various purposes—from homemade medicines to food–herbal preparations. This food–medicine connection is as tight as it was in the archival study of 1948, which shows the surviving Lithuanian tradition of growing both food and medicine in home gardens. Those cultivated plants most suitable for Lithuanian climatic conditions and with ethnic heritage-based medical applications can be a source of ideas for further research.

Highlights

The COVID-19 pandemic has created conditions for looking at the provision of health care via food at the household level as a crucial issue for public health, since homemade foods represent primary health care remedies that communities rely on in times of crisis [1].It is a worldwide trend that the majority of medicinal plants sold in local markets are wild species, which is obviously an environmental issue [2], while cultivated plants solve the problem of conservation of wild plant species
The choice of growing certain species in home gardens and using them for food and homemade medicines was closely linked to verbally transmitted traditions
The results of our study show that out of 100 currently used species in Tauragė District and 76 plant species used for medicinal purposes in the 1948 archives, the official herbal monographs of the European Medicines Agency describe 37 (32%) and 10 species (30%), respectively

Summary

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has created conditions for looking at the provision of health care via food at the household level as a crucial issue for public health, since homemade foods represent primary health care remedies that communities rely on in times of crisis [1].It is a worldwide trend that the majority of medicinal plants sold in local markets are wild species, which is obviously an environmental issue [2], while cultivated plants solve the problem of conservation of wild plant species. In Eastern Europe, selling of crops and processed homegrown food products is closely related to the economy of these countries [3]; this trend is observed in Lithuania, where elder people face a difficult economic situation. Field plants (such as wormwood), which are necessary as a medicine and do not grow in the surrounding area, are planted near homes. This trend is observed in other countries, with medicinal plants but with wild forms of plants brought to the garden and cultivated directly for food purposes, either because of the expected greater

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