Mental herbals - A context-sensitive way of looking at local ethnobotanical knowledge: Examples from Bukovina (Romania)

Abstract

Since Local Environmental Knowledge (LEK) stems from numerous sources and is learned and transmitted variously, it is highly heterogeneous. One of the reasons for its heterogeneity is a fact that transmission routes and patterns depend mainly on different sources, such as personal experience, influence of others as well as books and media. The objective of this article is to show how useful the idea of mental herbal might be in deep, complex and contextualized description of heterogeneous structure of LEK on the example of Polish minority members in a village Pojana Miculi (Rom. Poiana Micului) - South Bukovina, Romania. The whole body of skills, practice and knowledge of plants held by a particular person is defined here as the mental herbal. Mental herbal approach implies focusing on the particular holders of LEK - their stories, perceptions, everyday practices, considering the environment, and the context, in which LEK functions.