It is only recently that written sources of local knowledge on plants are not being ignored by scholars as not belonging to “traditional” knowledge. Ethnobotanical texts, however, if they at all focus on knowledge from written sources, hardly ever pay any attention to the actual processes of interaction with written texts and illustrations. During our research, we examined people’s interactions with texts, illustrations, and herbarium specimens of plants they collect or are familiar with. We focused on a small community of Shiri people in the mountainous village and in the lowland settlements in the Republic of Daghestan, Russia. In the paper, we address the following questions: how do Shiri people interact with illustrations, written text, and herbaria specimens? How is this interaction influenced by the practice of plant collection? What are the methodological implications of the ways people interact with illustrations, texts, and herbaria specimens? Our research was based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork: co-designing of a booklet showing edible plants people collect in Shiri, semi-structured interviews, and video-recordings, and observing interactions between people and text/illustrations/voucher specimens. We identified three kinds of interactions between individuals and text/illustrations: “text-wayfaring”—predominantly a bodily interaction between an individual and illustrations and text; “fact/spelling checking”—predominantly discursive and information focused; “between wayfaring and fact-checking”—the mix of the two. Using the idea of textual poaching, as well as the knowledge-making approach, we show that the mode of interaction with text/illustrations influences what is acquired, and how. This process influences readers’ LEK. The mere presence of an information in the text available to people does not imply that they will acquire it, make use of it, and change their LEK. Photographs and pressed specimens of locally known plants are often not (or only partly) recognized by the interlocutors. Video-recording is essential for analyzing the above mentioned interactions. In ethnobotanical research, it is important to pay more attention to people’s interaction with their sources of knowledge, including text and illustrations. The discursive part of LEK is more easily influenced by written sources. The practice of plant collection is not as easily influenced. Ethnobotanists function in a particular context and are embedded in discourses oriented towards conservation of bio-cultural diversity that value heritage as such, so it is important to be aware of one’s positionality. A methodology that relies on showing pressed specimens or photographs to interlocutors may be a very misleading way of collecting ethnobotanical data.

中文翻译：

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植物采收实践如何影响与当地植物插图和文字的互动？来自北高加索地区达格斯坦的一个案例研究。

直到最近，有关植物的本地知识的书面资源才被学者们视为不属于“传统”知识而被忽略。但是，如果植物学著作完全只关注书面来源的知识，则几乎不会关注与书面文字和插图互动的实际过程。在我们的研究过程中，我们研究了人们与他们所收集或熟悉的植物的文字，插图和植物标本室标本之间的相互作用。我们的重点是在俄罗斯达格斯坦共和国的山区村庄和低地居民区中的一个希里人小社区。在本文中，我们解决了以下问题：Shiri人如何与插图，书面文字，和草标本？这种相互作用如何受到植物采摘实践的影响？人们与插图，文字和标本的互动方式的方法学意义是什么？我们的研究基于长期的民族志田野调查：共同设计一本小册子，展示人们在Shiri收集的食用植物，半结构化访谈和视频记录，并观察人与文本/插图/凭证样本之间的相互作用。我们确定了个人与文本/插图之间的三种相互作用：“文本行进”-主要是个体与插图和文本之间的身体相互作用；“事实/拼写检查”-主要是话语和信息集中；“在旅行和事实检查之间” —两者的混合。利用文字偷猎的思想，以及知识创造方法，我们表明与文本/插图的交互方式会影响所获得的内容以及方式。这个过程会影响读者的LEK。文本中仅存在可供人们使用的信息并不表示他们会获取，使用和更改其LEK。对话者通常不会（或仅部分地）识别出当地已知植物的照片和压制标本。录像对于分析上述互动至关重要。在民族植物学研究中，重要的是要更加注意人们与他们的知识来源（包括文本和插图）的互动。LEK的推论部分更容易受到书面来源的影响。植物收集的实践不那么容易受到影响。民族植物学家在特定的背景下发挥作用，并被嵌入到旨在保护生物文化多样性的论述中，这些论述重视遗产本身，因此，重要的是要意识到一个人的地位。依靠向对话者展示压制的样本或照片的方法可能是收集民族植物学数据的非常误导的方式。