Plants used for making recreational tea in Europe: a review based on specific research sites
Sukand et al. Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine
0 Abbreviations: EE eastern Europe, CE central Europe , SE southern Europe
1 University of Warsaw Botanic Garden , ul. Ujazdowskie 4, 00-478 Warsaw , Poland
2 Investigacion y Desarrollo Rural, Agrario y Alimentario, Apdo. 127, 28800 Alcala de Henares , Madrid , Spain
3 Department of Botany and Biotechnology of Economic Plants; Institute of Applied Biotechnology and Basic Sciences, University of Rzeszow , Werynia 502, 36-100 Kolbuszowa , Poland
4 Department of Food Science and Technology, Institute of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Sciences, Estonian University of Life Sciences , Kreutzwaldi 62, 51014 Tartu , Estonia
5 Institute for Linguistic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences , Tuchkov pereulok 9, Saint-Petersburg 199053 , Russia
6 Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Uppsala University , Box 514, SE-751 20 Uppsala , Sweden
7 Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore , Antakalnio 6, Vilnius , Lithuania
8 Department of Biology, University of Prishtina , St. Mother Teresa, Prishtine, Kosovo
9 Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology University of Warsaw ul. , Zurawia 4, 00-503 Warsaw , Poland
10 Department of Botany, Institute of Biology, University of Biaystok , ul. Swierkowa 20 B, 15-950 Biaystok , Poland
Sukand et al.
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Open Access
Definition of the study object
We propose to use the term recreational tea in the
paper to describe those herbal beverages prepared as
infusions and that are consumed in a food context for
their general social and/or recreational value or for their
general attributions of being healthy drinks. This
definition excludes those teas prepared and consumed only
for specific medicinal purposes.
Introduction
Although the English term tea denotes the infusion
made of the leaves of Camellia sinensis (L.) Kuntze, it
also refers in colloquial language to the wide variety of
locally grown herbs used in different regions of the
world for recreational tea.
In this article, we use recreational tea as a technical
term for an infusion made of leaves or flowers of taxa
* Correspondence:
1Estonian Literary Museum, Vanemuise 42, Tartu 51003, Estonia
Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
other than C. sinensis. Such beverages were already
known in Europe long before the oriental tea was
introduced there in 1606 by the Dutch East India Company
[1]. However, they have also been used as substitutes for
the oriental tea. Many of these plants have folk names like
tea-leaves and tea-plants in various native languages [2].
Historically, some people have shown a preference
for recreational tea although they could afford the real
thing. Recall Agatha Christies fictional character Hercule
Poirot who always drank recreational tea. The medicinal
properties of the infusions of local plants were well known
and prized by most herbalists, but it is difficult to state
that the habit of drinking herbal tea as an accompaniment
to ones meal or as a social activity was a common practice
before the introduction of the oriental tea. Nevertheless,
as there is a growing interest in research on the chemical
composition of specific herbal teas produced commercially
in different regions of the world (e.g., see [3-5]) there is
also the need for comparative ethnobotanical research on
the plants used for making food-side infusions in different
areas of the world. Although a few regional studies on
European teas have already been published [6-8], most
reports list only a few plants for making tea among the food
plants of a specific region (e.g., see [9-13]).
Our research contributes to the European chapter of the
worldwide review on the use of local plants for making
tea. Our main objective was to assess and compare the
available information on plants used for recreational tea
purposes in continental Europe. We argue that despite the
fact that a wide variety of plants are used in different
regions, only a few specific genera or even species are
preferred as the source for making infusions used in the
context of food, and not for specific medicinal properties.
Data and methods
This review relies on numerous ethnobotanical studies and
published ethnographies as well as unpublished fieldwork
results. Although there are many historical sources that
reflect on the use of local species for food, the authors
were not aiming to cover them all, as the identification of
the species listed in historical sources can oftentimes be
problematic (see [14]). Instead, we selected 29 sample
regions located in 14 countries, covering mostly
postSocialist countries (Russian Federation, Estonia, Lithuania,
Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Kosovo,
Serbia) and Mediterranean countries (Italy, Spain and
Portugal). The geographical distribution of the regions
is denoted in Figure 1. The period of data collection for
the studies included in our review ranges from 1926 to
2012. Detailed information on each study region is
pr (...truncated)