Hungarian ethnobotanical studies in Romania

Abstract

Traditional ethnobotanical knowledge concerning plant use can be attributed to the archaic folklore system in Romania, particularly in Transylvania, which forms a considerable part of the country. Various regions of Transylvania are inhabited by Hungarians and Romanians. This chapter provides an overview of the first herbal books from the sixteenth century published in Transylvania, followed by the most significant ethnobotanical surveys conducted in ten main regions from the 1930s to date, the results of which were published in monographs, books and journal papers, mostly in Hungarian. Based on traditional experiences and observations of inhabitants, the present data inventories the local use of plants in ethnomedicine, in construction and household tools, as food and fodder, as well as in various beliefs and customs. The reports are of pivotal importance in documenting the ethnomedicinal knowledge of the rural people, underlining the significance of vernacular names, various applications, home treatments and special local terminology of the plant taxa in the selected areas. Similar surveys are being performed today, focusing on the preservation of archaic elements of folk traditions, as well as on the study of new and promising plant taxa for further laboratory analyses. However, traditional knowledge of local people has clearly decreased; therefore, the conservation, documentation and preservation of these data from disappearance are of primary importance in the future.