Original title: A comparative ethnobotany of Khevsureti, Samtskhe-Javakheti, Tusheti, Svaneti, and Racha-Lechkhumi, Republic of Georgia (Sakartvelo), Caucasus
Researchers interviewed 170 people in five regions of Georgia about plants they use. They recorded 480 species, most often reported for food or medicine. People gathered 282 species only from the wild, grew 103 in home gardens, and did both with 84. The remote Tusheti-Khevsureti region had the most reported species and unique species.
Imagine making dinner with ingredients from your garden and from nearby hills. It is hard to remember which ingredients are grown at home, which are gathered outside, and what each is used for. In this paper, interviews with local people map those ingredients and uses across five regions of Georgia.
Plant knowledge can shape what people eat and use as medicine, and it can fade between generations. By recording plant use across five Georgian regions, this study gives a picture of what people knew and where they gathered or grew the plants.
The abstract reports interviews from five regions, not all of Georgia, and does not describe how representative the participants are of each region. It records reported plant uses but does not establish their medical effectiveness, how often each plant is used in daily life, or how knowledge changes over time.
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A comparative ethnobotany of Khevsureti, Samtskhe-Javakheti, Tusheti, Svaneti, and Racha-Lechkhumi, Republic of Georgia (Sakartvelo), Caucasus — Rainer Willi Bussmann, Narel Y. Paniagua-Zambrana, Shalva Sikharulidze et al. — Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine — doi:10.1186/s13002-016-0110-2
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.