Odpowiedź Zygmunta Glogera (1845-1910) na ankietę etnobotaniczną Józefa Rostafińskiego ogłoszoną w 1883 r., dotycząca pogranicza Mazowsza i Podlasia

Abstrakt

The publication presents Zygmunt Gloger’s (1845–1910) manuscript (recently discovered in the Faculty of Biology, University of Warsaw) as an important piece of source material for Polish ethnobotany. It concerns the traditional use of plants in Poland on the border of Podlachia (a historical region in the eastern part of Poland) and Mazovia (a historical region in mid north-eastern Poland). In the manuscript. the author describes the vegetables, fruits and flowers cultivated in gardens. He also describes folk methods of dyeing yarn or Easter eggs. Gloger draws special attention to the herbs used in religious rites. The sequence of issues raised by Gloger corresponds exactly to the questions in Professor Rostafiński’s survey (published in 1883), which leads us to believe that this is Gloger’s response to Rostafiński’s survey which, for some reason, was not sent to the addressee. In his work Gloger used the regional plant names that we identified, and where possible we matched them with the Latin (botanical) names of the plants. This manuscript is a valuable historical source, which not only well-documents the use of plants cultivated in the second half of the 19 th century but also constitutes a documentation of the changes in farming and culinary habits resulting from historical events.