Abstract
<p>Croatia is a country of diverse plant use traditions, which are still insufficiently documented. The aim of this study was to document local traditions of using wild food plants around Lake Vrana (northern Dalmatia, Zadar region). </p><p>We interviewed 43 inhabitants of six traditional villages north of Lake Vrana. On average 12 species were listed, which in total produced an inventory of 55 food plants and 3 fungi taxa. Wild vegetables were most widely collected, particularly by older women who gathered the plants mainly when herding their flocks of sheep. Wild fruits and mushrooms were rarely collected. The former used to be an important supplementary food for children, or for everyone during times of food shortage, and the latter were relatively rare due to the dry climate and shortage of woods.</p><p>The most commonly collected plants are wild vegetables: <em>Cichorium intybus</em>, <em>Foeniculum vulgare</em>, <em>Sonchus oleraceus</em>, <em>Asparagus acutifolius</em>, <em>Papaver rhoeas</em>, <em>Rumex pulcher</em>, <em>Daucus carota</em>, <em>Allium ampeloprasum</em> and <em>Silene latifolia</em>.</p>
Highlights
In some countries of Europe, e.g. Spain, Italy, Poland and Estonia, intense research on the documentation of traditionally used wild food plants has been carried out over the last few years [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12]
We should mention the articles on wild food plants used in Bosnia-Herzegovina published by the late Sulejman Redžić [16,17]
Earlier, in 1976–1979, Bakić and Popović interviewed 5000 households on the Yugoslavian coast, all the way from Istria to the present Montenegrin-Albanian border [18]. (With the exception of a small section belonging to Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro, the coast constitutes a part of Croatia)
Summary
In some countries of Europe, e.g. Spain, Italy, Poland and Estonia, intense research on the documentation of traditionally used wild food plants has been carried out over the last few years [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12]. Reviews of older ethnographic literature concerning this issue have been published, e.g. Slovakia, Hungary and Sweden [13,14,15] The countries of the former Yugoslavia, in spite of their great biocultural diversity have produced relatively few ethnobotanical studies concerning wild food plants. Many interesting pieces of information were gathered in the recent study of wild vegetables sold in Dalmatian markets by the first author of this article and his colleagues [24]
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