Wild edible plants of Belarus: from Rostafiński’s questionnaire of 1883 to the present

There has been a renewed interest in wild food plants in recent years due to world-wide concerns about the quality of food made from mass-produced crop plants, which are poor in micronutrients and grown in petroleum based agricultural systems [1‐5]. At the same time, old traditions of plant gathering in most countries are being lost and need recording and preserving. This is also relevant for Eastern Europe. Fortunately in this part of the world many nineteenth and early twentieth century studies have managed to capture disappearing plant uses. This is one of the few places in the world where diachronic studies ranging over the period of a century are possible. Over the last few years, reviews of archival ethnographic studies concerning wild food plant use have been published in some eastern and northern European countries: Poland [6‐8], Estonia [9], Hungary [10], Sweden [11] and Slovakia [12]. These reviews brought the majority of wild food plant literature and data together, enabling inter-country and inter-region comparisons. It also makes this data available for an international readership, as they were originally, predominantly published in their national languages. However, some eastern European countries still remain terra incognita for modern ethnobotany. One of them is Belarus. We have not found any modern ethnobotanical studies concerning this country, apart from a short FAO report on crop genetic resources [13]. At the same time it is a country with a very rich folklore. It was Kazimierz Moszyński (1887–1959), the author of Kultura ludowa Słowian (the Folk culture of Slavs), who pointed out that the present area of Belarus is one of the parts of Europe where many vestiges of traditional culture had been preserved [14, 15]. He made a few expeditions to the Belarusian region of Polesia himself [16] and published an ethnographic monograph of its eastern parts [17]. For many decades, Belarus was treated by Polish ethnographers as one of the most interesting, “archaic” and “backward” places of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, ideal for ethnographic research. Even today, due to its political isolation and the fact that a part of its population still lives in traditional-style villages scattered over this heavily wooded country, Belarus is a very important place for European ethnobiology.

Moszyński was not the only Polish ethnographer fascinated with Belarus. Here we should list two other ethnographers: Michał Federowski (1853–1923) and Józef Obrębski (1905–1967). Late 19th century folklore concerning the use of medicinal plants was recorded by the afore-mentioned Federowski in the first volume of his “Lud Białoruski” (“Belarusian Folk”) [18] as well as by one of the leading Polish writers of that time, Eliza Orzeszkowa (1841–1910) [19‐28]. What is amazing is that both of them left rich, detailed herbaria documenting the names of plants and their uses. The second and third parts of Federowski’s herbarium are kept in the library of Warsaw University [29] and Orzeszkowa’s main herbarium is stored in Poznań [24‐28]. The first part of Federowski’s herbarium was regarded as lost until last year, when it was discovered by one of the co-authors of the article (M.G.). Additional sources of information are the materials gathered by local researcher, Zośka Wieras [30]. Thus we can conclude that the 19th century use of medicinal plants in some parts of Belarus is relatively well documented. Unfortunately, very little information has been published on the use of wild food plants from the same territory [17, 31]. At the same time a large and well documented set of observations on the use of wild food plants in 19th century Belarus, made up of responses to Rostafiński’s questionnaire (mainly from 1883), is stored in two Polish botanical institutions, with most data still unpublished [31‐36]. As the files of Rostafiński’s questionnaire are some of the most important ethnobotanical documents in Europe, enabling us to draw a detailed picture of the use of wild plants in Belarus at the end of the 19th century, we decided to devote a separate article to them. Our aim was to compare their content with the scattered modern data on wild food plants in Belarus.

Fifty-eight identified botanical species were mentioned altogether by Rostafiński’s respondents from Belarus. Five taxa remained unidentified (Table 3). The largest category is composed of the green parts of plants (27 species), which were usually consumed in the form of soups (23 species). Two kinds of soups were distinguished: sour (kisla vara) and non-sour (presna vara). The first was made by leaving the ingredients to ferment for a few days or by adding acidic ingredients. Sorrel (Rumex spp.), ground elder (Aegopodium podagraria) and hogweed (Heracleum sphondylium s.l.) were used in sour soups. Nettle (Urtica spp.) and fat hen (Chenopodium album) were, according to Federowski, made into non-sour soups, though other data suggest that sometimes they occurred in sour soups as well and that this division is not very sharp. Sorrel was sour by itself, whereas hogweed was probably lacto-fermented. Soured birch and maple sap were also added to wild vegetable soups (e.g. with ground elder) to make them sour. According to Federowski one of the wild vegetables were commonly dried for winter use. Apart from the wild plants his herbarium also contains two cultivated species (thus not included in Table 2) eaten raw as salads: Borago officinalis L. (voucher specimen 21; hurecznik, ahurecznik/ogórecznik eaten with cream and salt) and Tropaeolum majus L. (22; nastulek, nastulka, flowers eaten with cultivated lettuce). He also mentions the raw use of some wild lettuce called zieziulina sałata, but does not provide a specimen.

A few spices are also mentioned, such as the fruits of Carum carvi, roots of Armoracia rusticana or aromatic leaves put under baking bread (Quercus robur, Acorus calamus).

Out of the species in the 19th century only 32 species have been reported as used in 20th or 21st century studies. In these modern studies, however, new plant taxa are reported as used, mainly children’s snacks or alien species of fruits. Altogether, we collected data on the culinary use of 67 taxa in the 20th and 21st centuries (Table 2, 3), which gives 93 edible taxa recorded at some point between 1883 and the present.

We can assume that only some of the plants used in Belarus in the 19th century are used nowadays. For example, using Pteridium aquilinum rhizomes and Polygonum bistorta seeds as staples was already a curiosity by the end of the 19th century. Also the reported wide use of wild green vegetables has immensely decreased in Belarus, with the exception of the use of Rumex spp. to make a kind of sour soup, still an important part of Belarusian cuisine. Thus, a process similar to other eastern European countries has occurred in Belarus, where the use of most wild greens has ceased [6‐12, 57] and the main edible plants used or remembered are fruits and children’s snacks (compare [6, 58]). Also, in contemporary internet culinary forums in Belarus, fruits are the dominant wild food category mentioned. The use of wild vegetables has decreased (Figure 3) in a similar manner among the Belarusian minority in NE Poland investigated by one of the co-authors of this article (E.P.), where many of the plants listed in this study are remembered mainly as old-time poverty food (e.g. Urtica spp., Chenopodium album, Aegopodium podagraria etc.).

Pietkiewicz, in his 1928 ethnographic monograph of a part of Polesia, mentioned only Urtica, Rumex, Oxalis and Atriplex (mistakenly for Chenopodium) as wild green vegetables used in food [51], whereas Moszyński, also in 1928 [17] did not even mention the use of any other greens apart from Rumex, although Rostafiński’s respondents, only 40 years before, mentioned more species used in that area.

The resilience of sorrel in Belarusian and other north and eastern European cuisines [6‐12], i.e. the fact that it is still widely used, while other wild greens have declined so much, is mysterious. The most likely explanation is that it is appreciated due to its sour taste and smooth texture. The sour taste has been highly appreciated in traditional eastern European cuisines and most sour foods are produced by lactic fermentation of pickling. Thus sorrel’s sour taste may have automatically placed it in the human realm of transformed food, even before it was cooked. Paraphrasing Lévi-Strauss’s division [59], instead of Raw versus Cooked (in the French original cru and cuit), we could say Raw versus Cooked/Sour. By belonging to the Sour/Cooked domain, sorrel was singled out from other wild vegetables.

The resilience of the contemporary use of wild fruits such as Rubus idaeus, Vaccinium spp. and Viburnum opulus in Belarus may be explained by cultural attachment to these species, which are perceived as “very healthy”. Selling Viburnum opulus fruits, for example, at the open markets of Minsk in September is still very popular, and most of the sellers and customers ascribed to the berries – which are sometime also consumed raw, as snacks – important preventative properties. In the 19th century Viburnum was not even reported as wild food, but rather as medicine. This reinforces the findings that the permanence of Traditional Plant Knowledge in the context of cultural changes may be directly related to the success of certain food plants, which are perceived as food-medicines, as, for example, other contemporary field ethnobotanical studies among migrants have demonstrated [60, 61].

The differences between the species eaten in the 19th century (Table 2) and contemporary uses (Table 3) do not only arise from the fact that the use of some species has ceased. Some species listed nowadays may have been used in the 19th century but the amount of observations (only from 13 respondents) was not enough to capture it. Also, the structure of Rostafiński’s questionnaire was very specific, he pre-suggested certain taxa, which he was particularly interested in, which may have slightly biased the information given. Children’s snacks reported in the contemporary data must have been collected in the 19th century, but were not recorded then. A similar situation occurred in Poland, when a questionnaire among botanists revealed a long list of minor children’s snacks, never noted before [62].

The commonness of drying wild vegetables for winter use in soups, observed by Federowski, is worth noting. Drying wild greens for human use as a preservation technique occurs in parts of China (see e.g. [63]) but has not been observed in Europe. The fact that these plants were preserved suggests that they had a high cultural status. It is even more puzzling, then, that their presence in contemporary Belarusian cuisine is so reduced.

Of course, it is possible that more in-depth studies in rural Belarus would confirm the survival of some uses. Moreover, a noteworthy phenomenon is the gathering of several recently established non-native taxa. Edible fruits such as Hippophaë rhamnoides, Prunus cerasifera and Sorbus intermedia, which are cultivated, are also gathered from wild locations (i. e. as garden escapees) or from populations planted as a part of town greenery. Also Rumex confertus is a recently spreading large-leaved sorrel species incorporated into cuisine, like native Rumex species.

As the use of wild vegetables was more common in Belarus in the 19th century than in Poland as observed by Moszyński, Federowski and a few other ethnographers, we can assume that even now we may find more vestiges of traditional plant use in this country, making it a promising arena for future ethnobotanical studies. Here we point out just a few of the ethnobotanical phenomena in Belarus which should be studied in detail:

The recorded wild food plant taxa constitute 5% of the country’s flora. It is lower than for Hungary – 7% [10], Estonia – 6% [9] and Poland – 5.5% [8] but higher than Slovakia – 3.5% [12]. However, the amount of data available from Belarus is lower than from the first three countries, which means that several taxa with minor importance in traditional nutrition could be yet to be discovered. The general structure of various use categories and the sequence of their disappearance from the contemporary diet, as well as some culinary vogues (like jam- making, in the 20th century) are astoundingly similar to those reported from other northern and eastern European countries [5‐12, 58].

The responses to Rostafiński’s questionnaire from 1883 present extremely valuable historical material as the use of wild food plants in Belarus has since undergone drastic changes, similar to those, which have taken place in other Eastern European countries. Although most taxa reported in this study have been used in other Slavic countries, the local food culture preserved, at least up to the early 20th century, many archaic features, e.g. the wide use of lacto-fermented wild food plants, drying wild vegetables for winter etc. Further studies on the level of preservation of the uses of plants reported by Rostafiński’s respondents are needed.