Dysphania schraderiana (Schult.) Mosyakin & Clemants - An overlooked medicinal and ritual plant used in Poland.

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE

The paper discusses the traditional ritual, medicinal and insect repellent use of Dysphania schraderiana in Poland, a plant with little ethnobotanical and phytochemical data. Our research suggests that its properties should be further studied comparing it with the related D. botrys and D. ambrosioides.

AIM OF THE WORK

D. schraderiana is an aromatic and medicinal annual herb related to D. ambrosioides and D. botrys and practically absent from historical accounts of plant uses in Europe. The aim of this work is to characterise the current use of D. schraderiana in south east Poland on the background of historical Dysphania species use in Europe.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

The data on D. schraderiana was collected in 2020, based on interviews with 42 people in rural areas of south-eastern Poland where the species is used today. A range of textual sources were searched including old medicinal herbals, pharmaceutical handbooks, ethnobotanical publications and culinary databases regarding all the uses of Dysphania species in Europe.

RESULTS

In the study area D. schraderiana occurs in the whole spectrum of cultivation stages - from being intentionally cultivated to completely wild. The plant is used mainly as an apotropaic and insect repellent, blessed during Catholic church holidays (mainly Assumption Day), and sometimes used as incense in churches (and blessed on Epiphany Day). D. schraderiana rarely occurs in European historical sources, except sometimes classed as a false, inferior form of D. botrys, which has been known for centuries as a moth repellent and treatment for respiratory illness. We hypothesise that the plant was not easily distinguished from D. botrys and their uses strongly overlapped. For some unknown reason the use of D. botrys died out, whereas a relatively large semi-feral population of D. schraderiana exists in south-eastern Poland where it has remained a culturally important plant.

CONCLUSIONS

D. schraderiana is a rare case of a non-native plant traditionally used within an area of Europe but previously nearly overlooked in European ethnobotanical literature. Historical uses of Dysphania spp. in other areas of Poland and former Poland (now western Ukraine) suggest that the genus was used more widely in regions beyond the one studied. However, a very compact distribution of use suggests that D. schraderiana may have been brought to SE Poland from a single source outside the study area. Its common name, and use as a holy incense plant, is associated it with the well-known biblical tree resin obtained from Commiphora myrrha (Nees) Engl.