Did White Swallowwort (Vincetoxicum hirundinaria) Exist or Did It not During the Organic Regulations Regime? Notes on some Previously Unknown Documents from Wallachia

Abstract

The present text is a small commentary on a classic case of cultural conflict that occurred in Wallachia in 1835 under the Organic Regulations regime. Starting from the discovery of some unknown documents in the archives of Romanați county, relating to the public proclamation of the non-existence of the plant iarba fiarelor (white swallowwort), which was made use of by treasure hunters at the time, we have tried to establish what was at stake in this conflict. Popular culture suddenly became a threat to the authorities of a modern state that was operating a real process of socio-cultural dressage in that period, a move that inevitably brought it into a precisely datable conflict with those who still remained faithful to a folklore culture. One of those happy cases in which history comes to the aid of ethnology.