What Is Wild Food Plant

Abstract

Usually ethnobotanical studies define the domain of wild edible plants through the etic perspective, in order to be understandable to other researchers within the discipline. Most often such definition underlines the principles of inclusion of plants into some specific study. Ethnobotanists look at wild through the level of the domestication of the plants, situating them just on one side of the continuum of plant–human relationship. For example, Logan and Dixon (1994) define wild plant through the habitat without secondary disturbance. Dufour and Wilson (1994) and Molina et al. (2014) indicate that wild plant is neither managed nor cultivated. Turner et al. (2011) consider wild edibles in their review on the literature of internationally used wild food plants only plants gathered without “particular manipulation”. However, they admit some extent of manipulation for all wild resources.