Hidden Histories and Ancient Mysteries of Witches, Plants, and Fungi

Hidden Histories and Ancient Mysteries of Witches, Plants, and Fungi Frank Dugan

l 30

Hidden Histories and Ancient Mysteries of Witches, Plants, and Fungi

Famine, foraging, and foragers It is virtually certain that foraging for edible wild plants and fungi increased when harvests of cereals diminished as a result of attacks of pathogens or other causes. Peasants foraged for wild foods in times of famine in classical antiquity (Frayn 1975). Wilkins and Hill (2006), translating from Galen (129–217 A.D.), note “When famine had taken hold in the spring, the . . . nurse had lived on wild herbs in the field.” Such foraging continued, over centuries and into modern times, during famines or to supplement monotonous diets (Figs. 9 and 10).

Fig. 8. Peas-porridge hot . . . Peas may have stayed in the pot nine days, but common folk were glad to have them in the pot at all.

Albala (2007) commented on the negative association of beans, lupines, and peas with the poor, and added, “In common households, if the rhyme is to be believed, a huge pot with little more than peas would be left in the hearth indefinitely” (Albala 2007).

Illustration by F. Richardson (Firman and Maltby 1920).

In medieval England, “Women, children, and maid servants contributed to the household economy by picking greens . . . , nuts, wild fruits and berries . . .

In famines, acorns were gathered and made into bread” (Hanawalt 1989). Also in medieval England, wild plants (“food for free that could be found in woods and wastes”) could be critical for the difference between mere shortages and famine (Dyer 1998). Walter (1989) noted for early modern England the significance of “need years and need foods,” including among the latter “nettles and

Fig. 9. Peasants scavenging for edibles in the countryside during the Irish potato famine. During this famine, “many . . . live on the herbs of the field . . . on stinging nettles, wild elder and such plants” (De Leidsche Courant 1845, quoted in Kelly 2012). Throughout history, foraging increased in times of hunger. “Boy and Girl at Cahera” by James Mahony (Illustrated London News, 20 February 1847, courtesy of Washington State University Libraries MASC)

l

Shadows of Works and Days

31

Fig. 10. From The Forest with Mushrooms, Ivan Shiskin, 1883. Foraging was an integral part of peasant life, and was especially persistent in the preindustrial societies of eastern Europe.

l 32

Hidden Histories and Ancient Mysteries of Witches, Plants, and Fungi charlock” (Urtica spp. and Sinapis arvensis) as well as fern roots, acorns, and pulses. Seaweeds of various sorts were documented as famine food in Scotland in a document of 1709, and also served as such in eighteenth-­century Ireland (Kenicer et al. 2001). For Scotland and Ireland, Drury (1984) added the plants silverweed (Potentilla anserina), wild sorrel (Rumex acetosa), wood sorrel (Oxalis acetosella), watercress (Rorippa spp.), wild liquorice (Glycyrrhiza glabra), wild spinach (Chenopodium spp.), wild rape (not specified, but probably Brassica spp.), periwinkle (Vinca spp.), and dock (Rumex spp.), plus tree bark (from species with little tannin, e.g., birch, beech, and some others) as well as various nuts and berries. “It is apparent that although the agricultural economies were different in [Scotland and Ireland] similar species of wild plants were used in both in times of food shortage. This would seem to indicate a widespread and ancient tradition of famine food relating to these particular species” (Drury 1984). Vickery (2010) concisely related similar instances of plants used in times of hardship during the early modern era (wood sorrel, silver weed, pignut [Conopodium majus], and others).

In modern Europe, “increasingly, many of the poorest Europeans worked as wage laborers on other people’s plots, which meant they had to buy everything they ate, or forage for wild plants or animals” (Albala 2007). In Burgundy in the year 1662, famine “forced a third of the inhabitants, even in the good towns, to eat wild plants” (report of tax officials to the king, quoted in Treasure 2003). The 1662 famine (in cool and damp weather) was a continuation of that starting in 1661 (in rainy and lukewarm weather, Le Roy Ladurie and Daux 2008). The events of 1661–1662 in Burgundy may well illustrate the combined negative potential of stripe rust (under cool temperatures) and stem rust (under warm temperatures) whenever moisture permitted. Poor peasants without sufficient access to wild plants or charity did indeed starve (Super 2002).

A paucity of reliable documentation on plants characterizes medieval Europe; nonetheless some herbalists of the time did record the importance of edible wild plants (Grivetti and Ogle 2000). Specific instances of using wild plants during famine in medieval or premodern England include Dymond’s (1981) gathering of ‘sea-­peas’ in a famine in Suffolk in 1555, and the gathering of a wild vetch in Surrey in 1250, cited above (Tuckett 1846). Later records include “docks and nettles” in 1741 in Ireland (county not specified), charlock in a local famine of 1757 in Donegal, and the same plant 1795–1797 in Scotland (Drury 1984). “Ruthie bread” of wild mustard or charlock seed was eaten in times of hunger in the Orkney Islands in the nineteenth century (Drury 1984).

Although these records are comparatively late, as noted above, Drury (1984)

l

Shadows of Works and Days

deduced from comparative folklore studies that use of these plants as famine foods was “ancient” in Ireland and Scotland, and so presumably extended back into premodern times.

“Many weedy species were occasionally used, in Kievan Rus and elsewhere in medieval Europe, as ‘famine food’ ” (Bezuko et al. 2003). In early modern Europe, the “beggars of the fields” anticipated the season when “wild plants come out and men feed themselves” (Camporesi 1989). The link between foraging for wild plants in war or other times of food scarcity is documented for eighteenth century to present day Poland by Łuczaj and Szymański (2007). Łuczaj et al. (2011) presented instances of wild marsh woundwort (Stachys palustris) being recorded by eighteenth-­century botanists as eaten “in times of necessity” in various countries. Although definitive proof that Scandinavian peasants used the plant is lacking, “tubers of S. palustris have been used in Scandinavian famine food recipe books . . . up to the twentieth century” (Łuczaj et al. 2011), so analogous use in more distant times is highly probable.17 In Methana, Greece, “older villagers describe past days of hunger,” particularly for children, who stole fruit and vegetables from fields and who also ate a “type of wild vetch” (Forbes 1976). In Nesbitt (2005) are examples of chickweed, cow parsnip, various nuts, etc., used as foods during times of scarcity, and Dirks (1980) cited multiple instances for accelerated foraging during famine, albeit mostly during modern times. Obviously, illiterate, preliterate, and even most literate persons of early times would not provide for researchers of later centuries documentation that crop diseases or other factors contributed to increased foraging. Researchers have nonetheless speculated that cereal diseases may already have promoted foraging of wild resources even in the Neolithic (Arbogast et al. 2006).

But foraging for wild plants or mushrooms has its hazards.

Boletes, chanterelles, morels, and common field mushrooms contained significant levels of protein, vitamins D, K, B1, B2, niacin, folic acid, potassium, phosphorus, iron, iodine, and copper. Their nutritional value was well worth the labor of hunting them, but the toxicity

17 Łuczaj et al. (2012) listed famine plants still important in the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century in Europe, including Russia in 1892, during the first and second World Wars, Ukraine in 1932–1933, the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), Holland in the winter of 1944–1945, and others. Such plants were utilized during the siege of Sarajevo (1992-­1996), where media programs compiled by a botanist within the city explained their use (Łuczaj et al. 2012).

33

l 34

Hidden Histories and Ancient Mysteries of Witches, Plants, and Fungi of some varieties might encourage a cautious eater to ignore this foodstuff. (Pearson 1997) Higher plants as well as mushrooms can be toxic (or just inedible); Garnsey (1988) included a section on pathological effects of famine foods. “Stored knowledge about ‘famine foods’ ” was an important part of survival (Ó Gráda 2009). Wild edible plants had “importance during times of food scarcity” and women especially had “ethnobotanical knowledge . . . concerning weedy food” (Pardo-­De-­Santayana et al. 2010).

It is well documented that women especially foraged for wild plants and fungi, and that the herbalists, physicians, and botanists of premodern Europe often consulted “herb-­wives” (“root-­women,” “wise-­women,” “old wives,” etc.) for names, properties, and uses of plants. Explicit acknowledgments of the importance of this transmission of knowledge from herb-­wives and other common folk to herbalists and early botanists are encountered in the writings of Euricius Cordus (1486–1535), Otto Brunfels (1488–1534), Phillip von Hohenheim (better known as Paracelus, 1493–1541), Pietro Andrea Mattioli (1501–1577), Carolus Clusius (1526–1609), John Gerard (b. 1545), Anton Schneeberger (1530– 1581), John Parkenson (1567–1650), Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), Joseph Banks (1743–1820), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), and others. This indebtedness of early botanists, herbalists, and physicians is an oft-­told story, although the link with food scarcity is seldom explored and connection with crop disease has been ignored or insufficiently recognized. Reviews citing primary and secondary literature on this indebtedness include Arber (1912), Grieve (1931), Stannard (1973), Beith (1995), Wear (2000), Allen and Hatfield (2004), and Dugan (2011).

On the basis of evidence presented above, it is nearly certain that fungal crop diseases, in contributing to food scarcity, provided special incentive to foraging and to knowledge of wild plants as well as of fungi. This occurred at a time when men (herbalists, early botanists, and physicians) were learning about plants and mushrooms from the herb-­women of Europe. It is ironic, but highly supportable, that fungal plant pathogens were a contributor to the growth of ethnobotanical and ethnomycological knowledge.

Conclusions Evidence from multiple disciplines necessitates revisions to the history of cereals and legumes in Europe. Rusts, barberry, ergot, and scald generated a series of unfortunate events on medieval European cereal crops, thereby pro-

l

Shadows of Works and Days

moting misery and famine among the poor; however, enrichment of early plant science was a byproduct of this misery. The adoption of rye as a major crop for the poor in medieval Europe, and the nearly simultaneous introduction of barberry into western and northern Europe during the Middle Ages, had complementary, negative impacts on human health. Although rye is a nutritious cereal capable of growing on poor soils, it is susceptible to ergot, a producer of mycotoxins. The spread of barberry provided an alternate host and means of overwintering for stem rust (Puccinia graminis f.sp. tritici) and stripe rust (Puccinia striiformis), major diseases of wheat and barley. Barley, like rye, was a primary food for the poor. Both barley and rye were during this time attacked by scald, caused by fungi (Rhynchosporium spp.) jumping to domesticated barley and rye from grasses in Scandinavia in early European agriculture. This series of unfortunate events dramatically increased hunger among the European poor. One response was the use of pulses, and especially vetches, for food during times of scarcity. Another response was increased foraging by the poor for wild plants and fungi. Resultant ethnobotanical knowledge of wild plants and fungi in premodern Europe was heavily exploited by the herbalists and doctors who laid the foundations of modern botany, medical botany, and mycology.

Much earlier, climatic change resulting in prolonged drought had robbed Proto-­Indo-­Europeans of the Russian Steppes of opportunities for legume cultivation, but moisture for crop legumes remained adequate over much of Greece and the Balkan Peninsula. A vocabulary for legumes is largely absent in Proto-­Indo-­European (PIE). Archaeobotanical finds of legume crops are common for the Greek and Balkan Neolithic and Bronze Ages, but are restricted for these times to the periphery of the Steppes. The time of drought in the Steppes (~2500 B.C.) is equivalent to the final phase of dispersal of PIE-­ speaking peoples from the Steppes and the formation of daughter languages, including Proto-­Greek (the ancestor of Greek, including Mycenaean). These circumstances plausibly explain why Pre-­Greek, but not PIE, includes several words for crop legumes, including vetches. Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures in Greece and the Balkans transmitted to the rest of Europe, including Indo-­ European peoples, vocabularies and uses for legumes, including use as famine foods in classical, medieval, and premodern times. Grass pea and/or other vetches gained wide distribution throughout the Mediterranean and Europe as foods of the poor, in spite of toxicity associated with overingestion. Grass pea and several other vetches are resistant to (or seem to escape) both drought and moisture-­induced ascochyta blights, primary diseases of pea, chickpea, lentil, and faba bean. Grass pea especially is more buffered against both insufficient

35

l 36

Hidden Histories and Ancient Mysteries of Witches, Plants, and Fungi and excessive rainfall than are most other legumes or cereals. Vetches especially were eaten by the poor when crops failed from drought, or from fungal plant diseases such as rusts, scald, ascochyta blights, and others.

The above discussions are hardly exhaustive of significant developments in ancient to premodern European agriculture. Of equal interest is the saga of pests of stored foods. Arthropod pests of stored grain seem to have first moved about the ancient world, then north with the Roman armies, and later with seafaring Norsemen (Buckland 1981; Panagiotakopulu and Buckland 1991; Buckland and Panagiotakopulu 2005); these and analogous instances of synanthropic arthropod fauna, especially pests of forage-足and foodstores, have been reviewed (Elias 2010; Plarre 2010). Gladieux et al. (2008) have demonstrated how the apple scab pathogen, Venturia inaequalis, originated with domestic apple in central Asia and spread along the Silk Road to Europe. The spread of Bremia lactucae on Lactuca serriola (prickly lettuce, the probable progenitor of cultivated lettuce) and L. sativa (cultivated lettuce) has received considerable attention. Resistance in L. serriola becomes less diverse from a genetic perspective as one goes from central to western Europe, i.e., away from centers of origin of host and pathogen (Hulbert and Michelmore 1988; de Vries 1997; Kuang et al. 2008; Lebeda et al. 2008).

With time, perspectives from mutually reinforcing disciplines will coalesce into a more defined and detailed narrative for these and other crop histories.

The hypotheses, discussed under Vexing Vetch and under the Conclusions above as a series of unfortunate events, may be supported, modified, or discarded. Beset as we are with evidence of climate change, plus migration of plants, plant diseases, and pests, it behooves us to examine past consequences of similar historical phenomena.