ABSTRACT: The article presents results of ethnobotanical research on non-specialist knowledge about plants among members of the Polish minority in the Southern Bucovinian villages of Plesza (Romanian: Pleşa) and Pojana Mikuli (Poiana Micului). Knowledge about plants and the contexts in which they are encountered constitutes the mental herbal of each individual interlocutor. In the article I show that plant naming patterns reflect many features of the ethnobotanical knowledge of the interlocutors. The individual character of these patterns and the fact that they are created by daily experience cause some of the plants to lack monolexemic names. On the contrary, names (mostly Romanian) are present in knowledge coming from sources such as the media, books and school education. In this case some plants may have more than one name in one’s mental herbal. The presence or absence of a monolexemic name does not influence the importance of the given taxon in a particular mental herbal.
Key words: plant naming, mental herbals, Romania, Bukovina, Polish minority
