Wild vascular plants gathered for consumption in the Polish countryside: a review

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. Rubus, Sambucus nigra, Vaccinium myrtillus, V. oxycoccos, V. uliginosum, V. vitis-idaea) and four taxa used for seasoning or as preservatives (Armoracia rusticana root and leaves, Carum carvi seeds, Juniperus communis pseudo-fruits and Quercus spp. leaves). The use of other species is either forgotten or very rare. In the past, several species were used for food in times of scarcity, most commonly Chenopodium album, Urtica dioica, U. urens, Elymus repens, Oxalis acetosella and Cirsium spp., but now the use of wild plants is mainly restricted to raw consumption or making juices, jams, wines and other preserves. The history of the gradual disappearance of the original barszcz, Heracleum sphondylium soup, from Polish cuisine has been researched in detail and two, previously unpublished, instances of its use in the 20th century have been found in the Carpathians. An increase in the culinary use of some wild plants due to media publications can be observed. Conclusion Poland can be characterized as a country where the traditions of culinary use of wild plants became impoverished very early, compared to some parts of southern Europe. The present use of wild plants, even among the oldest generation, has been almost entirely restricted to fruits.


Background
Wild plants, even after the advent of agriculture, constituted an important part of the human diet, especially in poor rural communities. Wars and times of famine were periods when the knowledge of such plants was especially important for communities [1]. Although there is huge data on the medicinal and culinary use of plants in Europe, the available material is usually dispersed in small ethnographic papers published in native languages. There is not an up-to-date exhaustive study on all Europe's edible plants, comparable with Moerman's Native American Ethnobotany [2], except for a popular guide by Couplan [3]. Although attempts to compile worldwide lists of wild edible plants exist [4][5][6][7], they are far from exhaustive.
Recent regional studies, especially from the Mediterranean part of Europe, like some regions of Spain [8][9][10][11], Italy [12][13][14][15] and Cyprus [16], as well as the comparison of several regions of Spain, Italy and Greece [17], have shown that the continent has a rich and varied culture associated with the culinary use of wild plants. Reviews on a national scale, concerning the ethnobotany of wild food, have also been published, e.g. reviews of wild edible plants used in Spain [18] and Bosnia-Herzegovina [19], a monograph of edible green vegetables of Italy and a list of potentially edible plants of Slovenia [20]. This paper is an attempt to present a checklist of food plants collected from the wild in another European country -Poland. The authors hope that this review will be a building block in a monograph of wild edible plants of Europe, encompassing the traditions of all European nations. Poland lies in the centre of Europe, and thus shares a large proportion of flora with its neighbouring countries, so the knowledge of traditional use of its plants may be very valuable. However, due to language difficulties, most Polish ethnobotanical literature is not known outside the country, except for the brilliant work of Maurizio [1], published also in German [21] and in French [22].
Poland is a middle-sized European country, with an area of 312 thousand km 2 , slightly smaller than Germany and larger than Italy (Fig. 1). Although some climatic variation occurs, it is a country with a relatively uniform cold temperate climate and a large proportion of lowland areas. Natural potential vegetation is predominantly deciduous woodland (with the dominance of Quercus robur, Carpinus betulus, and, in the south and west, Fagus sylvatica) with some coniferous woodland (mainly Pinus sylvestris and Picea abies) in poorer soils, however the dominant type of present forest vegetation is Pinus sylvestris plantations. The vascular flora of Poland contains approximately 3000 species, including the better-established aliens [23].
Polish borders have shifted a few times. The last such shift occurred after World War II, when, as a result of the decision of world's superpowers, the country's borders were shifted some 200 km westwards (Fig. 1). Because of this, accounts of the use of some plants in Polish pre-1939  plants in the areas of western and southern Poland (Silesia, Pomerania) which used to be part of Germany before World War II, although we have included post-World War II references from these areas.
A very important factor shaping people's interest in wild plants as food are times of famine or food scarcity. There is little evidence of widespread famine in Poland in the last 300 years, like that ones which occurred in China, Ukraine or Ireland, although a large proportion of the rural population in the 19 th century were undernourished [24]. Obviously some years were better than others, for instance Maurizio mentions years 1844-1897, as particularly bad for agriculture, and abounding in food shortages [1]. The problem increased throughout the 19 th century with strong population growth, but then it was alleviated at the turn of the 19 th and 20 th century by mass emigration to North and South America. Another period of strong under-nourishment was World War I, particularly its last two years, when Germany and Austria, two of the three countries occupying Poland, organized wild food collection points [1]. Characteristic feature of the Polish countryside were regular shortages of food in spring, when winter stores of grains and potatoes were running out. There is even a regularly used word in the Polish language, przednówek, literally 'before the new crops', which refers to the period of spring, which was commonly associated with hunger. Poland was for centuries an exporter of grain to the west of Europe, so with its large area under cultivation and large proportion of flat, easily cultivated land it was not as prone to hunger as more mountainous countries. On the other hand its southern part has always been very densely populated, so that many large families have had to live off a plot of land smaller than one hectare. Hence a popular expression was coined, nędza galicyjska, literally Galician poverty, referring to the south of Poland, which constituted the province of Austro-Hungarian empire named Galicja (Galizien in German) [24].
Eating wild products is becoming fashionable in our postmodern society. Articles on the use of wild plants appear in popular magazines, which can influence their use. However, this is not a new phenomenon, and, since the existence of print, herbals and periodicals have published such information. Thus we can never be sure whether the recorded use is a local ancient tradition or a custom created by printed materials or medieval herbalists. Hence the approach of the authors towards the literature was very critical and mainly ethnographic literature was taken into account, or those popular articles and books, which reported firsthand the traditional use of certain plants.
Polish ethnobotanical literature on wild foods is not very rich, but has quite a long history and very rich traditions in mapping ethnographic phenomena. The most impor-tant source from the turn of the 18 th and 19 th century is the herbal of Krzysztof Kluk [25], a priest in Ciechanowiec (NE Poland). Among medicinal properties he also included the edibility of a species. As he often quotes information from foreign sources, in our checklist we only included the species which were clearly used in Poland, which can be guessed from expressions like "simple people gather it", "in our country" and the like. Another work of great importance is the monograph of wild edible plants by Adam Maurizio [1,22,23]. His monograph attempts to trace the gathering of wild plants across the world, but focuses mainly on Europe and Siberia, containing many references to Poland. Other important papers in this field include Rostafiński's work on the history of the use of Heracleum [26], Moszyński's monograph on Slavic folk culture which contains a detailed chapter on eating wild plants with many personal observations of the author [27], and Henslowa's monograph of the consumption of the genera Chenopodium, Rumex, Sambucus, Urtica and Atriplex [28].
The first list of edible plants of Poland was published by Mowszowicz [29]. He earlier published a similar paper on spices [30]. However this author did not include detailed references about the origin of his information and he included all potentially edible plants, especially plants consumed in other Slavic countries. Thus, unfortunately, this work could not be taken into account. A very important step in getting some deeper insight into the consumption of wild plants was the series of volumes of The Ethnographic Atlas of Poland, whose questionnaire included some questions concerning wild edible plants. A large proportion of data was collected in 1948-49 and 1964-69 [31], and generally gave the impression of a nation which had already lost, to a large extent, the tradition of consuming wild food other than mushrooms and wild fruits (the former especially, are still a living part of the nation's culinary culture). Maps on the use of most important wild plants were published in volumes 5 and 6 of the atlas [32,33]. Volume 7 was also going to contain maps of the use of some plants, but it has never been printed and is stored as a publicly available manuscript in the archive of the Polish Ethnographic Atlas at the University of Silesia in Cieszyn [34]. Fortunately its content was briefly discussed by its author, the late Janusz Bohdanowicz, in the commentaries to the Atlas, which contain his review of the main wild plants gathered in the Polish countryside [31]. Some of the data collected for the atlas were also summarized by Jędrusik [35].
on the use of these plants in other countries and continents, a few detailed original descriptions of the use of certain plants, in certain areas of Poland, can be found.
Other papers quoted in our review are usually regional ethnographic monographs of material culture or traditional food in particular, which include references to wild edible plants in their chapters about local food. The first to mention among them is a series of 19 th century volumes on the ethnography of Poland written by Oskar Kolberg, who sometimes gave short descriptions of edible plants [37][38][39][40][41], then other studies followed, practically in all regions of the country . The region most intensely studied by ethnographers was the Western Carpathians (particularly the Tatra Mountains, Podhale, Spisz and Orawa), where traditional culture was preserved including various food habits [41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51]63,64]. Altogether in this review, apart from the publications of the Polish Ethnographic Atlas, we used 12 general ethnographic papers on local rural culture, 6 local food monographs, 8 papers focused on wild food gathering practices in the countryside and 3 ethnomedical papers including Paluch's monograph [65] of plants used in Polish folk medicine (Tab. 1).
It must be stressed that the presented list of plants does not include records earlier than Kluk's work from 1786, e.g. studies of medieval cuisine and studies of archaeological remains from prehistoric times dealt with in other papers [66][67][68][69]. This review concentrates on food, including soups, jams, juices, sap and wines, but does not include herbal infusions or decoctions, difficult to deal with as they are most often drunk for medicinal purposes, with the exception of Tilia flower infusion and roasted acorn infusion which used to be in common everyday use throughout the country.

Methods
In the review we analyzed a possible full list of 42 ethnographic and botanical publications including unpublished master's theses manuscripts, documenting the culinary use of wild plants within the present area of Poland, since the publication of Kluk's herbal at the end of the 18 th century.
The majority of these papers contain Latin names of plants, except for three smaller ethnographic papers [43,46,51]. No herbarium specimens are available to confirm the proper identification in the cited works, however we tried to, at least partly, verify the identification using the recently published atlas of the distribution of vascular plants in Poland [70] and generally available floras and plant guides. Every time there was a discrepancy between the identification in the literature and our view on the taxonomic status of the recorded used plant, we included a note in the list of plants. In a few cases we ascribed a genus (or a folk species encompassing it) to a particular species, when that was the only species occurring in the area, e.g. in one case we changed the identification from macierzanka (Polish for Thymus) [46] to Thymus pulegioides, as this is the only species from the genus occurring in the Gorlice area. On the other hand we applied extreme caution looking at accounts in which we spotted an obvious botanical mistake, e.g. suggesting that Latin names of plants were added by automatically looking up names in a plant guide without deeper knowledge of botany, e.g. mistaking Origanum and Chenopodium, because of the similarity in Polish names (lebiodka and lebioda, respectively) [31,44].
In the case when a commonly used plant was identified to a genus level, which comprises two or three very common species, not distinguished by folk taxonomy, we assumed that they were all used. For instance we assumed that both Quercus robur & Q. petraea were utilized, but we omitted Q. pubescens, which is extremely rare. In the case of the Rubus subgenus Rubus (i.e. Rubus sect. Rubus plus R. caesius), which constitutes one folk species, but comprises many botanical species, we listed four species, commonest in Poland, which we personally witnessed being collected.
Some records were not possible to identify on the species level, but only on the genus level. Thus a methodological problem arose, how to count numbers of species of edible plants, so that we, on the one hand, do not count the same species twice (e.g. as Sonchus arvensis and as Sonchus sp.), and on the other hand, do not underestimate the large diverisity of species contained in some folk species, e.g. Rubus or Crataegus, where several species are grouped under one folk name. Because of this issue we applied two measures of diversity. One was the number of folk species recorded (e.g. the two species of oak as one taxon, the many species of Rubus sect. Rubus as one taxon, but each Vaccinium species separately, as they have different folk names). This measure was applied to compare the numbers of taxa used in different regions (Fig. 2). On the other hand when we summarized the number of all species used in the whole country, we counted all the botanical species separately, e.g. Quercus as two species Q. robur and Q. petraea. In this calculation we also included the taxa identified to the genus level if no botanical species from this genus were recorded (e.g. Galeopsis sp.), and counted them as one species, but did not include records for Sonchus sp., nor Malva sp., as the use of some species of these two genera had already been identified. However we counted the record for Ribes sp. as a separate species, as it definitely concerned a different species than Ribes nigrum, recorded elsewhere. Latin names of plants are listed according to Flora Europaea [71], and main synonyms are given including the name in the current checklist of Polish vascular plants of Poland [23]. Polish names of plants were also included, both official names from the checklist (ON) and local vernacular folk names (LN). Due to the great richness of variants of the local names, only the main ones or those contained in the cited works were used. Many of the local names are not unique to the given species and may refer to a few taxa, e.g. oset, for Carduus spp. and Cirsium spp. When official and local names were the same, we used the ON/LN symbol. When literature referred to a folk species containing two or more species, the folk and latin name were written as follows: folk species name 'FOLK SPECIES' (= Latin names).
In order to keep the list concise and to not inundate foreign readers with little known local geographic terms, the geographic location of use was given only on the regional level. The present administrative division of Poland into 16 regions called województwo was applied. The names of regions were coded as follows: We did not include information on the collection time as it was rarely mentioned in the literature and it usually falls within two categories, i.e. green parts of plants in spring (March -June) and fruits in their ripening time (July-October).
As some other authors [18], we use the classic term 'wild' in this review to refer to non-cultivated plants gathered in the field, including alien spontaneously occurring plants.
In the case of species which are both cultivated and wild we have taken into account only records of the collection of non-cultivated individuals, e.g. in the case of Malus, Pyrus, Rubus, Ribes and Armoracia rusticana, which once cultivated, now occurs as an established ruderal weed and is rather collected from the wild than grown.
In this review we did not apply quantification of the cultural importance of a species based solely on the number of reports, applied in some similar works [18], as the number of literature sources was quite small and the amount of information they contained was very uneven. That is why we based our final rating of the intensity of use on the number of reports, and their geographical distribution as well as our weighing of the importance of particular papers. Here the data from the Ethnographic Atlas of Poland [31][32][33][34][35] were taken into account in the first place, as they came from a grid of 380 villages dispersed evenly throughout the country. As 'commonly gathered species' we treated the species whose collection was docu- The number of wild plant folk species consumed in various regions of Poland Figure 2 The number of wild plant folk species consumed in various regions of Poland.
mented from the 1960s or later, in at least half of the sixteen regions of Poland.

Results
The use of 112 species of vascular plants as food, seasoning or beverage has been recorded in the Polish countryside since the 18 th century. They belong to 81 genera from 39 plant families. The list includes 20 species of trees, 23 species of shrubs (including 6 species of dwarf shrubs), 49 species of perennials, 3 species of biennials and 16 species of annuals. The largest number of species (nearly half) belongs to the category of green of vegetables -53 species. The ripe fruits (both fleshy and dry) and seeds of 43 species have been consumed as well as the underground parts of 10 species. Various parts of 16 species have been used as seasoning, and 13 species have been used as ingredients of bread.
There is large geographical variation in the number of species used (Fig. 2). The largest number of folk species -64, was recorded in the Małopolskie region, the hilliest area of Poland. This is much more than in the next region, Mazowieckie, with 44 species and Podkarpackie, with 43 species.
The lowest numbers of folk species -17, 20 and 21, were recorded in the three westernmost regions, where most of the pre-World War II population was moved to Germany and most of the present inhabitants are Poles moved from the eastern outskirts of pre-war Poland annexed by Soviet Union. Generally speaking, the south-eastern half of Poland has much stronger traditions of using wild plants as food than the north-western half.
It must be stressed that the analyzed literature documents an absolutely dramatic decrease in the use of wild plants as food. Only the use of 16 species as green vegetables (a lot of them solely as children's snacks) was recorded around the 1960s or later, which constitutes only 30% of all the recorded green vegetables. Out of them it is only Rumex acetosa that has remained a part of the everyday cuisine. In the 19 th century most of the recorded green vegetables were already treated as famine food or the food of the poor.
. Less of the traditional heritage has been lost in the case of fruits and seasoning. Thirty species of fruits (70%) are or were recently (1960s or later) consumed, including all the fleshy-fruited species, except Empetrum nigrum and Maianthemum bifolium, whereas the forgotten species are usually the ones with dry fruits (e.g. Bromus secalinus and Glyceria fluitans). Most of the traditional condiments (11 species, 69%) are also still used or remembered from recent past.  [73]. Another early account comes from Syrennius [74]: "Hogweed is familiar to everyone in our country, in Ruthenia, Lithuania and Żmudź. (...) It is useful as medicine and for food is very tasty. Both roots and leaves.
However the root is more useful as medicine and leaves as food. (...) Leaves are commonly gathered in May. (...) Soup made with it, as it is made in our country, Lithuania and Ruthenia, is tasty and graceful. Either cooked on its own or with chicken or other ingredients such as eggs, cream, millet." Hogweed was the main lacto-fermented soup of Slavs, the young leaves and stalks were covered with warm water and left for a few days to become sour [1].
According to a 17th century menu hogweed soup was served every Wednesday during the period of Lent for the professors of Jagiellonian University in Cracow and they also ate it as the main soup at Easter [75]. In the 18 th century it was already a rare food for poorer people, being replaced by beetroot soup, which took the name barszcz earlier attributed to hogweed [26], as Ładowski [76] wrote that "the vulgar people use hogweed to make a soup called Barszcz". Jundziłł [77] gave a description of its use in Lithuania, which was probably the same as the use in Poland: "they collect young leaves, ferment them in the same fashion as other vegetables and they are frequently eaten by village people. Or, dried in the shade like celery, they are kept for further use." The sudden decline of its use in the 18th century is documented by the fact that hogweed soup is not mentioned by Kluk [25]. According to Rostafiński hogweed soup stopped being made in Poland in the 18th or 19th century and the last record of its use in adjacent Lithuania comes from 1845 [26]. However Moszyński witnessed it still being made in Russia in the 20 th century [27]. In the past most fruits were eaten fresh or dried, whereas grass seeds (Glyceria spp. and Bromus secalinus) were used to make gruel or bread. In the second half of the 20 th preserving soft fruits in the form of jams, wines and pasteurized compotes became popular. However within the last few years it has been in decline due to the society's growing affluence.

Underground parts
The use of underground parts of plants (roots, rhizomes, bulbs) was recorded only for 10 species. Elymus repens rhizomes were particularly widely used. They were dried, ground and used to make soup, gruel or bread. Less common, mainly in the northern part of Poland, was the digging out of Pastinaca sativa roots. Use of sweet rhizomes of Polypodium vulgare survived until the 20 th century only as a children's and shepherd's snack.  [30,65].

Beverages
The main kind of herbal drink, and the only one drunk, up to the 20 th century, on a nearly every day basis, during the cold season, in the Polish countryside was the Tilia flower infusion. Another common drink, a coffee substitute among peasants, was an infusion of roasted acorns.
In spring tree sap was drunk, mainly fresh, only extremely rarely concentrated or fermented. This mainly concerned the sap from Betula pendula and B. pubescens, and to a lesser extent from Acer pseudoplatanus and A. platanoides. Drinking tree sap was gradually disappearing from the Polish countryside in the 19 th and the beginning of the 20 th century, becoming nearly obsolete, however is now reviving as a part of health food fashion.
Using juniper "berries" as the main ingredient of beer was very widespread in northern, central and north-eastern Poland, but nowadays survived only in the Kurpie area (central-NE Poland, Mz), where it is called psiwo jałowcowe or psiwo kozicowe.
Making juices, wine and, to a much lesser extent, liqueurs out of wild fruits seems to be mainly a 20 th century fashion, rarer in earlier times, but an extremely widespread activity in the countryside in the second half of the 20 th century in the Communist period

Bread ingredients
The seeds of Glyceria fluitans were used to make bread which was highly praised in the past [65], but the use of this plant died out completely at the beginning of the 20 th century. Other plants were used as famine additions admixed to ordinary leven bread or simple flatbread, or, only in extreme situations, used to make flatbread composed solely of wild plants.

Discussion
The presented list of species is not very long. The use of 112 species was recorded (3.7% of the flora), most of them as obsolete famine foods and children's snacks. Out of these only 51 species have been used since the 1960s.
Of them the list of still commonly collected wild edible plants includes only two green vegetables, 15 folk species of fruits and three taxa used for seasoning or as preservatives. The use of other species is either forgotten or very rare. So within the last 100 years a marked shift has occurred, from collecting a variety of plant parts, including leaves of common ruderal and grassland plants cooked for potherb (especially Urtica spp., Chenopodium album, Atriplex spp.), and starch-rich famine plants (Elymus repens, Quercus spp.), to collecting mainly forest and forest edge fruits, and a few species of seasoning. There are many species whose use was reported from the Ukraine, Belarus or Russia [1,4,27], which have not been recorded as food plants within the present territory of Poland within the last few hundred years (e.g. Arum spp., Orchis spp., Calla palustris, Bunias orientalis, Nymphaea alba, Chaerophyllum bulbosum, Polygonum bistorta, Tragopogon pratensis, Angelica sylvestris). Many species consumed during famine or food scarcity in the 19th century and during World War I in Germany and Austria [1], and common in Poland, e.g. Aegopodium podagraria and Alliaria petiolata, also do not appear in Polish culinary ethnographic literature either. The use of some of these species might have become obsolete before ethnographic studies began, e.g. Aegopodium podagraria leaves used for potherb in medieval times [66]. Looking at the use of potherb plants, four cat-egories of plants can be distinguished. Firstly, plants which were probably used as potherb only before written records (e.g. Aegopodium podagraria, Angelica sylvestris, Alliaria petiolata). Secondly, plants whose common use stopped between the 18 th century and the beginning of the 20 th century (e.g. Alchemilla spp., Cirsium rivulare, C. oleraceum, Glechoma hederacea, Malva spp., Heracleum sphondylium, Ranunculus ficaria, Sonchus spp., Symphytum officinale, Taraxacum spp., Tragopogon spp., Tussilago farfara, Polygonum spp., Pulmonaria obscura) with only small traces of their use recorded. Thirdly, plants whose use has practically died out, but is vividly remembered by a large proportion of the population (Urtica spp., Chenopodium spp., Atriplex spp. and Oxalis acetosella). Fourthly, plants which are still in use today as potherbs, i.e. Rumex acetosa and R. acetosella. Strangely, there seems to be no clear explanation why the species disappeared from cuisine in such an order.
It must be noted that the number of wild vascular plant food species in Poland has been, at least within the last 200 years, extremely low, compared to some regions of Southern and Eastern Europe. This issue has already been raised by Moszyński [27] and confirmed by the Polish Ethnographic Atlas [31]. For comparison, in Spain over four times more wild culinary plants were recorded (419 species compared to 112 in Poland), which constitutes 6% of Spain's flora (compared to 3.7% of Polish flora). In Bosnia and Herzegovina, a country six times as small, but with a number of plant species similar to Poland, the use of three times as many (308) plant species was recorded [19]. In Sicily, an island fourteen times as small, whose population is eight times as small and which has the same number of plant species as Poland, 188 species wild edible plants were found, which is 6.2% of the flora, compared to 3.7% for Poland [78]. One small part of Catalonia in Spain has a list of edible plants containing 75 species, nearly as long as the list for the whole of Poland, including species whose use has been long obsolete [8].
Other Mediterranean regions have been also repeatedly reported to have high number of edible plants used, e.g. the region of Madrid -123 species [9], Campoo (Spain) -60 species [10] and one area in Italy with over seven thousand inhabitants -44 species [15]. If only the species still used in the 1960s or later are taken into account (around 50), the whole of Poland has less species than one small Mediterranean region! Another interesting comparison which can be drawn comes from Italy. Picchi & Pieroni [79] listed over 150 species of herbs used in traditional Italian cooking. Again, more species than the presented list for Poland, although their book does not include staple plants, fruit trees, roots etc. In one village of southern Italy, Castelmezzano, with less than a thousand inhabitants, the use of 60 species of edible plants was recorded [14], which is nearly the maximum number of edible plants recorded in a Polish region (Fig. 2) and double the maximum number of edible species recorded in a local ethnobotanical study in Poland [53].
Two factors may be responsible for this contrast between the rich heritage of using wild edible in southern Europe and a relative lack of it in the north. One reason is the gradual impoverishment of floras towards the north. In northern countries like Poland the flora is poorer, hence the choice of species is poorer as well. Polish flora has 3000 species compared to around 6700 species in Italy [80] or 7000 in Spain [18]. On the other hand in just two small regions in Cyprus, an island with a flora of around 2000 species (less than the Polish flora), the use of as many as 78 species of wild edible plants was recorded [16]. Thus the other factor, the culinary habits, must be more important. Hence "pure", refined foods like white sugar, white bread and pure good quality meat were most highly prized, and wild plants, apart from fruits and mushrooms, were associated with times of famine and seasonal spring food shortages.
The proportion of families in the wild plants consumed in Poland (Fig. 3) is similar to this of Mediterranean countries. Similarly to Spain [18] the most important families of edible fruits are Rosaceae, Ericaceae and Fagaceae, the majority of species used for seasoning comes from Lamiaceae, and the best represented family in the category of green vegetables are Asteraceae (however the use of most Asteraceae in Poland is obsolete). On the other hand the main difference is the nearly complete absence of the use of Liliaceae species in Poland, whereas among Mediterreanean edible plants they constitute one of the most important groups of plants [17,18].
Probably due to the extremely low endemism levels of the Polish flora, most of the plants recorded as edible in Poland are known to be used in a similar way in other countries [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. The exceptions are three species used for famine potherb: Cirsium rivulare, Euphorbia peplus and Lemna minor and one species, Scirpus sylvaticus, used as a children's snack. Three of these species have never been listed as edible in any ethnobotanical papers concerning wild food, and L. minor was mentioned only by one author [81].
In this review, with a few exceptions such as master's theses, we did not include unpublished material on gathering wild plants, which is stored in some ethnographic institutions in Poland (universities, Polskie Towarzystwo Ludoznawcze in Wrocław and the office of the Ethnographic Atlas of Poland in Cieszyn), as this requires further, extensive study. The archives contain mainly answers to questionnaires used in the research for the Ethnographic Atlas of Poland and notes from field interviews. The maps published for the Ethnographic Atlas of Poland summarized the use of the most important and widely used species [32,33] and the use of some species, using the data from the archives, was discussed by Paluch [65], Bohdanowicz [31] and Jędrusik [35], but much data is still waiting to be summarized and published, including the manuscript of the seventh volume of the Atlas [34].  [56] or Mentha piperita [35,55]. Only two more botanically aware authors noticed that what is collected from the wild can be two native species -Mentha arvensis [50] and M. longifolia [36], which have been until recently completely neglected in ethnobotanical research.
Culinary habits are never static. Within the last few years a strong revival in the use of wild plants can be observed. Local food producers are trying to popularise, rediscover or even invent "local products" which can be sold to tourists. This process had already started in the 1980s when villagers in Łapsze Niżne, in the Carpathians, sold Abies alba shoots syrup to tourists as a 'local speciality' [49]. Juniper beer has recently been rediscovered for commercial purposes in the Kurpie area (Tomasz Madej, spoken communication). Also, the media popularize the use of wild plants in cooking. A good example of their influence is a surge in interest in the culinary use of Allium ursinum. The famous culinary TV presenter, Robert Makłowicz, showed it sold in a vegetable market in the Ukraine in the TV programme titled Podróże kulinarne Roberta Makłowicza and a few popular publications on this species were published by the first author (Ł.Ł.) e.g. in the monthly magazines Wróżka and Ogrody. Within the last few years pasteurized birch sap, dried Allium ursinum and Urtica dioica leaves and oak coffee have appeared in health food shops heralding a period of increased interest in wild foods. The strong influence of the media on the collection of wild products was already observed by in the 1970s and 1980s [47,49]. In that period publications in the women's magazine Przyjaciółka and popular culinary guides by Irena Gumowska were particularly influential [e.g. [82,83]]. The presented list of plants collected in Poland will allow the drawing of a clear boundary between what is a traditionally collected plant and what is a borrowing from another nation's culinary habits or a rediscovery of plants used in prehistory or in early Polish history. It will also help future researchers to focus on the more overlooked or confused taxa.

Conclusion
1. At least 112 species of plants, belonging to 81 genera and 39 families have been used to make food and drink in the Polish countryside.
Botanical families cited for the major food categories Figure 3 Botanical families cited for the major food categories. All families represented by ate least two species per category were included.
2. Only half of these species have been used to some extent since the 1960s, the usage of the other half stopped between the 18 th century and the 1960s. The utilization of wild fruits is still continued, whereas it is the category of wild green vegetables, which has been almost completely forgotten.
3. The proportion of flora utilized as edible plants is much lower compared to the countries of southern Europe, where relevant ethnobotanical research was carried.
4. The proportion of families used is similar to that of the Mediterranean countries, with the exception of Liliaceae, which are little used in Poland.
5. Further special ethnobotanical research is needed both in ethnographic archives and in the field to find the lesser known species of edible plants, often neglected by ethnographers.

Competing interests
The author(s) declare that they have no competing interests.   [41]. Receptacles: means of preparation not specified, until the turn of the 19 th and 20 th century, eaten by child shepherds, Mp [50], Sl [64]. NOTE. Although the former publication [50] refers to C. vulgaris, the identification was verified to C. acaulis in the telephone conversation with the author of the report (Urszula Janicka-Krzywda).

Appendix. List of species
Carlina vulgaris L. ON: dziewięćsił pospolity. Unspecified parts: as famine food, until the early 20 th century, Mp [48]. NOTE. This reference to C. vulgaris might be a mistake and in fact describe the use of C. acaulis (equally common in the Carpathians and larger) or at least both of the species indiscriminately.
Cichorium intybus L. ON/LN: cykoria podróżnik. Leaves: preparation methods not specified, used in the 18th century [25], eaten in the late 19 th century during famine, Mp [1]. Roots: roasted, as a coffee substitute, also used as a vegetable (without the bitter inner part), in the 18 th century [25].

Cirsium oleraceum
Probably under-recorded, usually not distinguished from Chenopodium (Atriplex and Chenopodium are not distinguished in the local folk taxonomy), probably the species used most commonly was A. patula L. although the only record referring to it is from Lu [39], where the leaves were cooked in a potherb called wołoka.

Vaccinium vitis-idaea
Tiliaceae folk species 'LIPA' (= Tilia sp. pl.) ON/LN: lipa. The two native species from this genus, the commoner Tilia cordata Miller and the less common, restricted to the south of the country, Tilia platyphyllos Scop. are not distinguished by ordinary people and were used in the same fashion. Leaves: boiled together with the leaves of vegetables, as famine food, in 1885, Wm [27]; chopped to be included in bread, as famine food, in the 19 th century, Lu [39]. Cambium: dried and powdered into flour, during spring famines, bread made with Tilia and Elymus repens rhizomes flour was called pachana, until the turn of the 19 th and 20 th century, Mp [46]. Opening leaf buds: fermented in wooden containers, later used to make soup, until the early 20 th century, Mz [52]. Sap: one informant from the village of Rzepnik states that he has occasionally drunk the sap of both species in spring, following a local tradition, Pk [36]. Inflorescences: the whole inflorescences of both Tilia species are commonly collected in June-July, dried and used for making infusions, throughout Poland [25,35,36,[53][54][55][56]65], this infusion is believed to have medicinal properties, e.g. against colds etc. but up to the 20 th century used to be drunk on an everyday basis in colder months. NOTE. Kluk, in the 18 th century, described his experiments with making chocolate out of ground flowers and fruits and praised the oil extracted from fruits, but his activities were probably influenced by literature, in the 18th century [25].

Trapaceae
Trapa natans L. ON/LN: kotewka orzech wodny. LN: kotwiczka. Fruits: eaten after scalding, which helped to open the nut, until the mid-20 th century, Op [59]; unspecified preparation method, 19 th century, Lu [40]; in the past collected to be sold as a snack by Jewish merchants from Sandomierz, known there as żydowskie orzechy (i.e. Jewish nuts), Sw, Pk [85]. NOTE. Moszyński [27] stated that Trapa use by Poles died out (partly due to the near-extinction of the species), in contrast to the southern and eastern Slavs who still used it.