Plants used for making recreational tea in Europe: a review based on specific research sites

Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine, Aug 2013

This paper is a review of local plants used in water infusions as aromatic and refreshing hot beverages (recreational tea) consumed in food-related settings in Europe, and not for specific medicinal purposes. The reviewed 29 areas are located across Europe, covering the post-Soviet countries, eastern and Mediterranean Europe. Altogether, 142 taxa belonging to 99 genera and 40 families were reported. The most important families for making herbal tea in all research areas were Lamiaceae and Asteraceae, while Rosaceae was popular only in eastern and central Europe. With regards to botanical genera, the dominant taxa included Mentha, Tilia, Thymus, Origanum, Rubus and Matricaria. The clear favorite was Origanum vulgare L., mentioned in 61% of the regions. Regionally, other important taxa included Rubus idaeus L. in eastern Europe, Chamaemelum nobile (L.) All. in southern Europe and Rosa canina L. in central Europe. Future research on the pharmacological, nutritional and chemical properties of the plants most frequently used in the tea-making process is essential to ensure their safety and appropriateness for daily consumption. Moreover, regional studies dedicated to the study of local plants used for making recreational tea are important to improve our understanding of their selection criteria, cultural importance and perceived properties in Europe and abroad.

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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. - 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)


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Renata Sõukand, Cassandra L Quave, Andrea Pieroni, Manuel Pardo-de-Santayana, Javier Tardío, Raivo Kalle, Łukasz Łuczaj, Ingvar Svanberg, Valeria Kolosova, Laura Aceituno-Mata, Gorka Menendez-Baceta, Iwona Kołodziejska-Degórska, Ewa Pirożnikow, Rolandas Petkevičius, Avni Hajdari, Behxhet Mustafa. Plants used for making recreational tea in Europe: a review based on specific research sites, Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine, 2013, pp. 58, 9, DOI: 10.1186/1746-4269-9-58