Crumbotti and rose petals in a ghost mountain valley: foraging, landscape, and their transformations in the upper Borbera Valley, NW Italy

Foraged plants and mushrooms for food and medicine in the upper Borbera Valley

Fifty-nine wild and semi-domesticated food and medicinal plants and mushrooms, including two unidentified taxa, were recorded in total. We also documented the use of nine cultivated plants that exhibited unusual local uses. Table 1 shows this remembered and current foraging food and ethnobotanical knowledge of the upper Borbera Valley, and Table 2 lists the wild herbals recorded four decades ago.

Table 1 Wild and semi-domesticated food plants and herbal remedies used in the upper Borbera Valley (the table also includes a few cultivated plants whose local use is peculiar)Table 2 Wild plant-based domestic remedies recorded in the Upper Borbera Valley approximately 45 years ago (in bold are those botanical genera matching the ones recorded during the current field study)

A few of the plants recorded in the current study were extensively quoted, i.e. by more than 40% of the study participants. Among the plants collected mainly for proper food (non-herbal) preparations, boletus (Boletus spp.), chestnuts (Castanea sativa), nettles (Urtica dioica), rose petals (Rosa spp., see following paragraph), and two other lesser-known wild plants emerged as most important within the food and ethnobotanical knowledge of the upper Borbera Valley: the shoots of traveller’s joy (Clematis vitalba), used for an iconic spring omelette (similar uses are and especially were known in rural Italy [45]), and the aerial parts of a wild lettuce (Lactuca perennis, locally known as crumbotti, Fig. 4), which we may consider the real plant cultural marker of the area.

Fig. 4figure 4

Crumbotti (Lactuca perennis, photograph: Andrea Pieroni)

Wild Lactuca species are, in fact, only sporadically gathered and consumed in northern Italy (the opposite of southern Italy [45]) and would certainly never represent “the” prototype within the wild vegetable group in Alpine areas. Crumbotti are instead still gathered, in areas close to houses/villages, during the spring by almost every woman in the study area, and they are either consumed in salads, boiled, or used as filling in home-made festive ravioli.

Cicerbita alpina, a relatively rare wild vegetable species which grows high in the mountains, is similarly popular in another area of northern Italy (the Alpine north-east) and has indeed been the subject of increasingly threatening overexploitation in recent years (Pieroni, personal observation). The fact that Cicerbita alpina grows in pristine high areas and is difficult to find, together with its delicate taste, may explain its increasing culinary prestige. Conversely, crumbotti seem to be more widely appreciated since they grow in anthropogenic environments close to the centres of inhabited villages (while the surrounding woodlands and pastures have been fully abandoned, see below) and are therefore easy to find, and they are certainly also considered part of the local culinary identity because of their appreciated non-bitter taste.

As in other areas of Northern and Central Italy, primrose (Primula vulgaris) and mallow (Malva sylvestris) teas remain very popular in the study area [e.g. 5052].

Temporal dynamics of plant and mushroom knowledge

It is crucial to note that the overlap between the taxa in the tables (Tables 1 and 2) is extremely limited, and only three genera (Mentha, Rosa, and Sedum; in bold in Table 2) were recorded in both the previous study and in the current one. This may be due to the fact that these genera were and still are commonly used or quoted: apart from mint teas (ubiquitously used across Europe), rose petal-based preparations (as an external remedy) and Sedum leaves also seem to be part of local food knowledge. The extremely clear overlapping of the two data sets suggests that the LEK linked to herbal teas and remedies has been lost, however, and “new” uses have emerged.

We also collected information about foraged items which are only remembered and no longer actively practiced: this was especially the case for on the spot “snacking” of clove flowers (Trifolium spp.), sorrel stems (Rumex acetosella), whitebeam (Sorbus aria), hawthorn berries (Crataegus spp.), and Cornelian cherries (Cornus mas), as well as for the gathering of wild apples (Malus sylvestris) and wild pears (Pyrus pyraster) for the preparation of home-made ciders and vinegars.

The gathering of wild tree fruits was alive as a practice while agro-silvo-pastoral activities survived, as this knowledge is based on daily interactions with woodlands and pastures as part of the local management practices of common land (comunaglie) widespread in the Ligurian Apennines. The gathering and use of some wild herbal remedies have been completely abandoned today. Three herbs seem to have been significant for the local collective memory: Arnica montana, Polygala vulgaris, and Stachys annua (locally known as gerba). Locals remember that these wild plants were gathered in large quantities in the past decades ago, both for domestic herbal uses and especially for selling to intermediaries and herbalists from neighbouring cities. The decline in herbal ingredients is surely linked not only to the dramatic abandonment of many natural endroit where community life took place until the 1970s, but also to the very common processes that take place in all rural areas with the arrival of urbanisation and the more pervasive coexistence with pharmaceuticals.

On the other hand, in Table 1 we indicated, with “N”, the uses that the study participants perceived as “new”, having been recently introduced (during their lifetime), and a few of these cases deserve to be discussed.

According to our informants, the aerial parts of ramson (Allium ursinum) were never gathered/used in the past in the study area, but city visitors from Genoa introduced a few years ago the custom (still sporadic) of collecting and using this plant as a substitute for garlic (and basil leaves) in one of the most iconic Ligurian culinary preparations: pesto (a sauce said to have originated in Genoa and/or the Ligurian and Nice coast, consisting of crushed garlic, Mediterranean pine nuts, coarse salt, basil leaves, and ewe cheese, all blended together with extra virgin olive oil), which is mainly used for dressing pasta noodles. The introduction “from the city” of the use of Allium ursinum, which grows widely in beech woodlands in spring in the upper Borbera Valley, testifies to a phenomenon that is well known in southern Europe, where this plant was introduced a few decades ago as a panacea, and also possibly thanks to the terrific popularity it achieved when the books by Austrian herbalist Maria Treben (1907–1991), especially “Health Through God's Pharmacy” [53], which strongly advocated its use, were translated, and became best-sellers in many countries.

Another interesting case is safflower (Carthamus tinctorius, Fig. 5), whose cultivation and use as a substitute for the more expensive saffron in the typical north Italian risotto were also reported to have come from Genoa, where the harbour-centred labour possibly enabled locals to encounter and become familiar with this new “spice” (mainly coming from and used in Turkey and the Middle East). Genoa and the coastal Tyrrhenian side of Liguria were again considered by the study participants as areas from which another “new” plant ingredient was introduced: the peel of bitter oranges (Citrus x aurantium), widely grown along the Ligurian coast and increasingly used in the study area for preparing home-made digestive wines.

Fig. 5figure 5

Dried home-gardened safflower (“zafferano Genova”) (Photograph: Andrea Pieroni)

Again, frequent contact with “city visitors” from Genoa was considered to be responsible for the emerging practice of foraging and cooking the mushroom Craterellus cornucopioides, which was previously never gathered within the study area.

The huge discrepancies between the data sets we collected and that of the study conducted four decades ago (Tables 1 vs. 2) could also possibly be attributed to different methodological frameworks used for eliciting data, and especially the sampling (the criteria according to which study participants were selected). Unfortunately, no information was provided about the sampling methods adopted during the study conducted in the late 1970s.

Landscape transformations

As illustrated in Fig. 6, the current landscape of Carrega Ligure, located in the upper part of the Borbera Valley, is mainly characterised by woodlands, giving way to grasslands and shrublands on the top of Mount Carmo and the southern slope of Mount Colletto, respectively. The first impression of this type of landscape is its apparent “natural” value, but when we take a more in-depth look at the vegetative land cover, other land cover types and uses can be observed, and traces of past landscapes are revealed. In this section, a history of the landscape changes is described chronologically and illustrated in Figs. 7 and 8.

Fig. 6figure 6

Carrega Ligure (a) in 1950 (Photograph: William John Crosetti) and (b) in 1977 (Photograph: Richard John Crosetti)

Fig. 7figure 7

Evolution of landscape abandonment in Carrega Ligure during the last century

Fig. 8figure 8

Landscape function/use in Carrega Ligure during the last century

In the first half of the nineteenth century, the upper part of Borbera valley was dominated by an intensively (77.61%) organised agro-silvo-pastoral system. This historical rural system was based on five different functions: the grazing of cattle (sheep, cows, and goats); the production of hay; the cultivation of wheat, potatoes, vegetables, and corn, among other things; the production of fruit such as chestnuts, hazelnuts, peaches, and so on; and wood production. The land cover provided all these functions, as single or multiple uses. This intensive character was mostly related to the presence of cultivated land (31.83% in 1828) but also coppice woodlands (of both Quercus cerris and Fagus sylvatica) that were used for both wood production and grazing. The grasslands on the top of Mount Carmo were used for both hay production and cattle grazing (14.68%). Mount Colletto on the other hand was characterised by a less productive land cover, being shrubland, and was only used for the grazing of small livestock such as goats and sheep, and therefore the only land cover registered as extensive. Those grasslands and shrublands were part of historical common lands, managed by the inhabitants of Carrega and Connio through grazing rights. The cultivated lands close to the settlements were organised privately [54].

A decrease in intensity level, from 66.74% to 21.31%, was detected during the first half of the twentieth century. Cultivated lands, located on arable land in the surroundings of the settlements, remained rather stable and continued being used intensively. However, the grasslands lost the added function of hay production, concentrating only on cattle grazing. Grasslands were not the only land cover that changed. The change in land use was also related to a large invasion of secondary vegetation and mixed woodland, especially in less “interesting” and peripherical areas such as the former shrubland of Mount Colletto. Those steep and unforgiving areas were the first to be completely abandoned. Chestnut woodlands, located in the surroundings of the settlements, were almost completely abandoned from 1980 onwards, but retained the activity of fruit production, even if there was less demand. Coppice woodlands, in contrast, maintained the function of wood production, but, there again, in a more extensive way. The general process of extensification and simplification of land use throughout the twentieth century was mostly related to the shift from multiple to single use of the land cover. Some combinations of functions completely disappeared, especially the combination of hay production and grazing, and wood and fruit production alongside grazing activities. The combinations of different functions for a single land cover largely disappeared and a monofunctional organisation of the landscape emerged. These extensification and simplification processes were first noted in peripheral areas (outfield), and later moved towards the infield and higher meadows, with relevant ecological effects, as documented in other valleys of the Ligurian Apennines and beyond (a recent contribution by Piana et al. [55]).

The landscape of the upper Borbera valley is nowadays almost completely abandoned, as at least 60% of the territory no longer has any function or use. Those areas are recognisable by the dominant presence of invasive secondary vegetation and mixed woodland, which do not have any active function for the livelihood of local inhabitants. Approximately 6.5% of the landscape is used in an extensive way, meaning meadows and grasslands for hay production, woodlands for wood production, and high coppices, the last intensively used areas, for wood production and grazing activities.

This large extensification and even abandonment process is directly related to the high population pressure at the end of the nineteenth century. The historical agro-silvo-pastoral system which produced a highly intensively used landscape was no longer sufficient to feed the growing population of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Nonetheless, the upper Borbera Valley still offers extensive land uses such as cattle grazing on hillside pastureland in combination with wood production in high beech woodland, resulting, mainly, from previous wooded meadow pastures. The disappearance of the agro-silvo-pastoral system and the subsequently fast and drastic change of land use had a large impact on the land cover and on the ethnobotanical heritage of the landscape. So, apart from the disappearance of ethnobotanical knowledge due to demographic decline, a large number of local species related to the historical rural system are no longer found in the Apennine landscape.

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