Traditional uses of wild food plants, medicinal plants, and domestic remedies in Albanian, Aromanian and Macedonian villages in South-Eastern Albania

Ethnobiological research in SE Europe is especially important for providing concrete insights aimed at developing small-scale markets of local medicinal plants and food products. An ethnobotanical field study was carried out during late summer 2016 among Muslim Albanians, Christian Orthodox Aromanians and Christian Orthodox Macedonians living in six isolated villages of Eastern and SE Albania, as well as in one nearby village located in SW Macedonia. The field survey was conducted via semi-structured interviews by asking 32 local, mainly elderly informants, who retain traditional ethnobotanical knowledge (TEK) regarding traditional utilizations of wild food plants, medicinal plants (both wild and cultivated), mushrooms, plants used as a dye, and other home-made remedies pertaining to both human and animal health. Fifty-two botanical and fungal folk taxa and twenty-four other domestic remedies were recorded; approx. one-fifth of the total reports have not been previously recorded in Albania and the SW Balkans. Among these findings, the uncommon medicinal uses of Clematis, Verbascum, and Fraxinus spp. deserve phytopharmacological investigations. The most cited taxa were commonly used by all investigated communities, suggesting that the bulk of the Eastern and SE Albanian ethnobotanical knowledge is retained by all locals, beyond linguistic and religious affiliations.