Historical Ethnobotany in the Digital Age

Dear Colleagues,

History remains the bedrock for interpreting humanity’s past, yet the field of ethnobotany now stands at a unique crossroads. While developments in the digital humanities and digital archive offer transformative ways to systematise and analyse centuries of plant use, they also introduce modern challenges. In an era where artificial intelligence can generate "fictitious" content and non-existing references, the importance of verified, physically existing historical sources—such as printed books, hand-written manuscripts, and original fieldwork diaries—has never been more critical. These pre-AI records provide a stable, permanent foundation for research, allowing scientists to re-examine data through new theoretical lenses, understanding better the risk of synthetic misinformation.

Indeed, interpreting historical sources is rarely univocal; failed conceptualisation, misidentified species or linguistic misinterpretations can lead to errors that will remain in circulation for a long time. This Special Issue aims to bridge these realities by showcasing critical analyses of diverse historical sources and exploring diachronic changes in local ecological knowledge. We invite contributions that provide fresh insights into understudied archival materials and manuscripts, compare their content with the modern fieldwork results, and establish best-practice guidelines for navigating the intersection of traditional historical data and modern practice, which often include advanced technology.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Critical reviews of published historical ethnobotanical sources;
• Analysis of archival data on plant uses;
• Methodological papers on the best practice for working with archival and historical sources in ethnobotany;
• Interpretational papers on plant identification in historical sources with or/and without herbarium specimens;
• Possibilities in the modern applications of historical plant use;
• Diachronic comparison of historical plant use with the current field of ethnobotany;
• Examples of historical influences on specific and current plant use;
• Analysis of the potential influence of books and historical media (newspapers, magazines) and/or governmental systems on the use of plants.

This Special Issue welcomes articles on all aspects of historical ethnobotany within all potential use categories, including (but not limited to) food, medicinal, ethnoveterinary, household, building, and those related to specialization (e.g., apiculture- or fishery-related plant uses).

Dr. Renata Sõukand
Dr. Raivo Kalle
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Plants is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• history of ethnobotany
• plant identification in historical sources
• methodology in historical ethnobotany
• from past to present
• diachronic comparison
• old herbals