From aspirin to ancient remedies, trees have provided medicine for millennia. Learn about their healing properties.

#NaturalMedicine #Ethnobotany #Trees

https://www.wordforest.org/2022/03/25/the-medicinal-properties-of-trees-/

Map of potato cultivation in Europe in the early 20th century.

I love this kind of nerdy food information, especially when it's shown through a map!

#potato
#ethnobotany

(Source of map unknown.)

A comprehensive checklist of Mediterranean wild edible plants: Diversity, traditional uses, and knowledge gaps

"Early View

Online Version of Record before inclusion in an issue"

https://doi.org/10.1002/ppp3.70137 #Botany #PlantScience #Mediterranean #Biodiversity #Ethnobotany

#CentralAsia’s #fruit and #nut #forests: the real Garden of Eden?

Birthplaces of some of the world’s most beloved snacks

by Monica Evans
17 December 2020

"Millions of years ago, in the temperate montane forests of a little-known region in Central Asia, some of the world’s best-loved fruit and nut trees began to grow. #Apples, #apricots, #cherries, #plums, #grapes, #figs, #peaches, #pomegranates, #pears, #almonds, #pistachios and #walnuts all originated in the hills and valleys of the #TianShan mountain range, which stretches from #Uzbekistan in the west to #China and #Mongolia in the east.

"The area is volcanic and geologically tumultuous, but fertile – scientists have hypothesized that in a place prone to frequent eruptions, earthquakes and landslides, shorter-lived tree species that could disperse their seeds widely by making themselves palatable to large mammals had a better shot at survival than long-lived, slow-maturing trees.

"And that tasty survival strategy has served these species well. For residents of the region, the foods represent both security and social currency. 'From the taxi drivers to the ministers to the local people, almost everyone carries some #DriedFruit or #Nuts with them,' says Paola Agostini, a lead natural resources specialist for Europe and Central Asia at the World Bank. 'It’s like this safety net, and it’s also a lovely gift: something to share with others that is always appreciated.'

"Central Asian marketplaces offer a cornucopia of colors, flavors, textures and varieties – many more than those most of us are accustomed to finding in our local supermarket’s produce aisle. 'I was always astonished that people in the region could so easily tell which country a particular dried apricot came from,' says Agostini. 'Their knowledge of these products is just so deep.'

"Procuring and sharing these energy-dense treats is an ancient practice in the area. Fruit and nuts were major commodities on the Silk Road, an ancient network of trade routes that tracked through the heart of Central Asia, linking Europe, the Middle East and Asia, from the first century BC through to the mid-1400s. Over centuries of trade and travel – and lots of munching by humans, camels and horses along the way – prized fruit and nut species spread their seeds wider and wider, and new hybrid varieties were created, many of which are now supermarket and home-orchard staples, cultivated enthusiastically in temperate regions across the globe.

"Narratives of plant domestication often tend to overstate the role of humans, but newer science suggests that 'evolution in parallel' with the plants we love is often a more accurate way of framing this process. 'It’s very unlikely that when somebody took an apple from #Kazakhstan and carried it across an entire continent, they were thinking that they could cross it with another variety and end up with something better,' says #RobertSpengler, a paleo-ethnobotanist at the Max Planck Institute in Jena, Germany. 'They were more likely just carrying the seeds to plant somewhere else. And in doing so, they inadvertently set off a chain reaction of hybridization events.'

"According to Spengler’s research into the origins of apples, humans were not the first mammals to participate in that process of dispersal and co-evolution, either. In the late #Miocene, which spanned the period from 11.63 to 5.33 million years ago, large mammals such as #mammoths and #horses played critical roles in dispersing apple seeds and facilitating their evolutionary process into the large, sweet, flavor-rich fruits we enjoy today."

Learn more:
https://thinklandscape.globallandscapesforum.org/48941/central-asias-fruit-and-nut-forests-the-real-garden-of-eden/

#SolarPunkSunday #Ethnobotany #PlantHistory #SaveTheForests #SaveTheTrees #FruitTrees #NutTrees

Remarkable survey of archaeobotanical evidence for early processing of plant foods. Florin and Ramsey emphasize that theirs is a cautious approach to the evidence, but the conclusion is very clear: humans were extracting food from a wide variety of plants in ways that required grinding, leaching, and lots of tool use tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of years before the supposed emergence of sedentary agriculture.

Their discussion of crossing Wallacea is fascinating. They demonstrate the prior existence of a early, culturally transmitted bundle of adaptive skills for identifying, processing, and managing plant foods in new landscapes, including stone tools and fire, but equally, a capacity to discover, utilize, and steward unfamiliar food plants.

They firmly upend the assumption that the archaeology of food is just about eating animals, and open up the question of how old agriculture really is.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10814-025-09214-z

#ethnobotany #archaeology

2026 East Asia Plant Humanities Virtual Faculty Residencies

"June 1–12, 2026 (virtual) | Seminar for faculty in East Asia Studies who are interested in integrating more plant-related sources and narratives in their teaching. Apply by February 15."

https://www.doaks.org/research/fellowships-and-awards/virtual-faculty-residencies #PlantHumanities #EastAsia #Ethnobotany

#texturetuesday

Fruits de tilleul torréfiés.
Dans le cadre de mon expérience pour en faire une sorte de chocolat.

C'est bon, mais toujours pas le résultat escompté.
Est-ce un mythe ?

Le tilleul a sauvé nos ancêtres de famines et toutes ses parties sont bonnes à manger.

Une pensée pour les personnes de Gaza qu'il faut aider pour l'hiver.
https://gaza-verified.org/donate

#photography #photo #tilia #food #foodprocessing #texture #fruit #ethnobotany #ethnobotanique #experimentalarcheology

Tonka Bean: The Tale of a Contested Commodity

"Traditionally, sarrapia was used medicinally by Indigenous groups, such as the Mapoyo, and mixed-race groups like the Aripao and Jabillal. Guided by elders, one was supposed to consume no more than three fruits per day; local knowledge held that excess could cause fever or body aches..."

https://daily.jstor.org/tonka-bean-the-tale-of-a-contested-commodity/ #Botany #Ethnobotany #PlantHumanities