Abstract
Traditional ecological knowledge of plants is an important aspect of scholarship in relation to land use and contributes to the sustainable use and management of natural resources as well as to the monitoring of changes in the natural environment. The aim of the present paper was to examine traditional ecological knowledge in Hungarian communities in Slovenia in connection with knowledge of the plants growing in the region, their local names, and their uses. We quantified the earlier role of the utilized plant species in order to determine the former significance of certain species. We carried out structured interviews with a total of 20 individuals in three studied settlements. In the Hungarian communities in Slovenia, we uncovered knowledge of a total of 130 folk taxa. Of these, 123 taxa have local names. The majority of the folk taxa can be correlated with a single biological species. A significant proportion of the known species were utilized in some way, most of them as medicinal plants, wild edible plants, or ornamental plants. As in other farming communities, the most important species are mainly woody plants, which include the common hornbeam, the common juniper, and the silver birch. Among the herbaceous plants, utilization of the dandelion, nettle, and bulrush was significant. Members of the older generations living in the Hungarian communities in Slovenia still retain knowledge of plants that were once used on a daily basis, along with their local names and the traditional ecological knowledge connected with their earlier use.
Highlights
Members of the older generations living in the Hungarian communities in Slovenia still retain knowledge of plants that were once used on a daily basis, along with their local names and the traditional ecological knowledge connected with their earlier use
Traditional ecological knowledge related to the natural flora is an important aspect of environmental knowledge in communities that directly depend on natural resources and ecosystem services
The total obtained after multiplying the individual variables gives a numerical value representing the former significance of the species: UVI = U1 x F1 x E1 + U2 x F2 x E2 +...+ Un x Fn x En In the following, we indicate the local names of the folk taxa, as well as the scientific names, in italics
Summary
Traditional ecological knowledge related to the natural flora is an important aspect of environmental knowledge in communities that directly depend on natural resources and ecosystem services. Ecosystem services necessitate a knowledge of numerous plant species. Unauthenticated | Downloaded 11/02/21 01:25 PM UTC utilization of ecosystem services (e.g. gathering of edible or medicinal plants), while secondly, it ensures the botanical knowledge necessary for the management of natural resources (Babai – Molnár 2014; Glasenapp – Thornton 2011). In relation to folk plant knowledge, it is difficult to predict which part of the natural flora is covered by the plant knowledge of a given community. Ethnobiologists, in line with Móra’s observation, established four determining characteristics with respect to plant knowledge: 1) morphological distinctiveness (phenotypic salience); 2) striking morphological features (e.g. vividly colored flowers) (perceptual salience); 3) ecological traits (e.g. habitat indicator) (ecological salience); and 4) cultural utilization (e.g. medicinal plants) (cultural salience) (Gosler 2017; Hunn 1999)
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