IMA Fungus 15(1): e34103, doi: 10.1186/s43008-024-00156-7
“Buthowtruethatis, Idonotknow”: the influence of written sources on the medicinal use of fungi across the western borderlands of the former Soviet Union
expand article infoJulia Prakofjewa‡, Matteo Sartori‡, Raivo Kalle§, Łukasz Łuczaj|, Małgorzata Karbarz|, Giulia Mattalia‡, Povilas Šarka‡, Baiba Prūse‡, Nataliya Stryamets‡, Martin Anegg‡, Natalia Kuznetsova‡, Valeria Kolosova‡, Olga Belichenko‡, Muhammad Abdul Aziz‡, Andrea Pieroni, Renata Sõukand‡
‡ Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics and Statistics, Venice, Italy§ Estonian Literary Museum, Tartu, Estonia| University of Rzeszów, Institute of Biology, Rzeszów, Poland¶ University of Gastronomic Sciences, Pollenzo, Italy
© Julia Prakofjewa, Matteo Sartori, Raivo Kalle, Łukasz Łuczaj, Małgorzata Karbarz, Giulia Mattalia, Povilas Šarka, Baiba Prūse, Nataliya Stryamets, Martin Anegg, Natalia Kuznetsova, Valeria Kolosova, Olga Belichenko, Muhammad Aziz, Andrea Pieroni, Renata Sõukand.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-NC 4.0), which permits to copy and distribute the article for non-commercial purposes, provided that the article is not altered or modified and the original author and source are credited.
Citation: Prakofjewa J, Sartori M, Kalle R, Łuczaj Ł, Karbarz M, Mattalia G, Šarka P, Prūse B, Stryamets N, Anegg M, Kuznetsova N, Kolosova V, Belichenko O, Aziz M, Pieroni A, Sõukand R (2024) “Buthowtruethatis, Idonotknow”: the influence of written sources on the medicinal use of fungi across the western borderlands of the former Soviet Union. IMA Fungus 15(1): e34103. https://doi.org/10.1186/s43008-024-00156-7
Open Access
Abstract
Fungi have been used for medicinal purposes for many centuries. This study, based on 35 historical written sources and 581 in-depth semi-structured interviews from eight countries in the western borderlands of the former Soviet Union, investigates the medicinal use of fungi by local communities. We compared the taxa and uses obtained from fieldwork and historical sources with works that advocated fungi use within Soviet herbals, representing the centralised medical system. During fieldwork, we identified eight locally used fungi and one lichen. The highest numbers of medicinal uses were documented in Russia, Estonia and Ukraine. Studies published before the Soviet era listed 21 fungal taxa and one lichen species used in the study region. However, only six of these taxa were mentioned as used by people in our field studies (Amanitamuscaria, Boletusedulis, Lycoperdon, Morchella, Phallusimpudicus and Cetrariaislandica). Notably, these same six taxa were consistently endorsed in Soviet herbals. Of the remaining three taxa recorded in the fieldwork, none were mentioned in historical written sources. However, they were promoted either in Soviet herbals (Inonotusobliquus, Kombucha) or later popular publications (Cantharelluscibarius). This highlights the significant influence of written sources on the use of fungi for medicinal purposes within the studied local communities.
Keywords
Fungi, Eastern Europe, Medicinal fungi, Lichen, Historical ethnomycology, Knowledge circulation, Herbals, Local ecological knowledge, Ethnomycology, Book knowledge