Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine BioMed Central Review Open Access Wild vascular plants gathered for consumption in the Polish countryside: a review Łukasz Łuczaj*1 and Wojciech M Szymański2 Address: 1High School of Humanities and Economics in Łódź, Department of Humanities, ul. Rewolucji 1905 r. nr 64, 90-222 Łódź, Poland and 2ul. Witosa 6/18, 28-400 Pińczów, Poland Email: Łukasz Łuczaj* -
[email protected]; Wojciech M Szymański -
[email protected] * Corresponding author Published: 15 April 2007 Received: 21 December 2006 Accepted: 15 April 2007 Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 2007, 3:17 doi:10.1186/1746-4269-3-17 This article is available from: http://www.ethnobiomed.com/content/3/1/17 © 2007 Łuczaj and Szymański; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: This paper is an ethnobotanical review of wild edible plants gathered for consumption from the end of the 18th century to the present day, within the present borders of Poland. Methods: 42 ethnographic and botanical sources documenting the culinary use of wild plants were analyzed. Results: The use of 112 species (3.7% of the flora) has been recorded. Only half of them have been used since the 1960s. Three species: Cirsium rivulare, Euphorbia peplus and Scirpus sylvaticus have never before been reported as edible by ethnobotanical literature. The list of wild edible plants which are still commonly gathered includes only two green vegetables (Rumex acetosa leaves for soups and Oxalis acetosella as children's snack), 15 folk species of fruits and seeds (Crataegus spp., Corylus avellana, Fagus sylvatica, Fragaria vesca, Malus domestica, Prunus spinosa, Pyrus spp., Rosa canina, Rubus idaeus, Rubus sect.