Edible wild herbs and mushrooms of Tusheti (the eastern Greater Caucasus), Georgia

Background: Wild herbs were traditionally widely used in everyday diet of the population of alpine areas of Georgia. Ethnography has a long history of research in the country, and along with the results particularly intensified ethnobotanical and ethnomycological studies of the recent decades, it is interesting to synthesize the data scattered in the Georgian ethnographic sources, an attempt of which is the present paper. Methods: The review paper is based on the Georgian ethnographic literature sources deposited at the National Parliamentary Library of Georgia (NLPG). Literature searches were performed through the NLPG catalog (https://www.nplg.¬gov.ge/geo/Catalogues) with the major keyword “Tusheti”. Dictionaries of the Georgian language and specifically those of plant names were also consulted. Results: Seventy-three species and eight genera of vascular plants (the latter without particular species as only respective generic local names were found) mentioned in the ethnographic literature sources issues before recent ethnobotanical studies (Bussmann et al. 2016, 2017) as well as 26 species of mushrooms mostly revealed during interviews collected in the recent decades are listed with their local names used in Tusheti. The paper presents both Latin-Georgian (Tushetian) and Georgian (Tushetian)-Latin name lists of plants and mushrooms to ease the use of the material. Methods of preparation of traditional meals of the wild herbs and mushroom are described. Plants given in various literature sources under certain local names (13 in total) were not identified. Conclusions: The ethnographic sources on Tusheti published in the period from 1933-2007 and dictionaries of the Georgian language containing plant names and those focused on Georgian plants names from 1884-2005 present rich ethnobotanical and enthomycological material including linguistic data, which together with results of the recent studies gives comprehensive picture of human-plant interactions in the extreme eastern part of the Georgian Great Caucasus inhabitants. Key words: Edible plants, edible mushrooms, Tusheti, Georgia, the Caucasus.