- 1
- , Via del Pino 108, Pinerolo (Torino), I-10064, Italy. giada.bellia@gmail.com.
- 2
- University of Gastronomic Sciences, Piazza Vittorio Emanuele 9, Bra/Pollenzo, I-12060, Italy. a.pieroni@unisg.it.
Abstract
BACKGROUND:
An ethnobotanical field study on the traditional uses of wild plants for food as well as medicinal and veterinary plants
was conducted in four Waldensian valleys (Chisone, Germanasca,
Angrogna, and Pellice) in the Western Alps, Piedmont, NW Italy.
Waldensians represent a religious Protestant Christian minority that
originated in France
and spread around 1,170 AD to the Italian side of Western Alps, where,
although persecuted for centuries, approximately 20,000 believers still
survive today, increasingly mixing with their Catholic neighbours.
METHODS:
Interviews
with a total of 47 elderly informants, belonging to both Waldensian and
Catholic religious groups, were undertaken in ten Western Alpine
villages, using standard ethnobotanical methods.
RESULTS:
The uses of 85 wild and semi-domesticated food folk taxa, 96 medicinal
folk taxa, and 45 veterinary folk taxa were recorded. Comparison of the
collected data within the two religious communities shows that
Waldensians had, or have retained, a more extensive ethnobotanical
knowledge, and that approximately only half of the wild food and medicinal plants
are known and used by both communities. Moreover, this convergence is
greater for the wild food plant domain. Comparison of the collected data
with ethnobotanical surveys conducted at the end of the 19th Century
and the 1980s in one of studied valleys (Germanasca) shows that the
majority of the plants
recorded in the present study are used in the same or similar ways as
they were decades ago. Idiosyncratic plant uses among Waldensians
included both archaic uses, such as the fern Botrychium lunaria for skin
problems, as well as uses that may be the result of local adaptions of
Central and Northern European customs, including Veronica allionii and
V. officinalis as recreational teas and Cetraria islandica in infusions
to treat coughs.
CONCLUSIONS:
The
great resilience of plant knowledge among Waldensians may be the result
of the long isolation and history of marginalisation that this group
has faced during the last few centuries, although their ethnobotany
present trans-national elements. Cross-cultural and ethno-historical
approaches in ethnobotany may offer crucial data for understanding the
trajectory of change of plant knowledge across time and space.
