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Michał Federowski (Fedorowski) herbarium

The archive of the University of Warsaw Herbarium preserves an exceptional set of 19th-century ethnobotanical materials created by Michał Fedorowski (1853–1923), an ethnographer and folklorist who studied the culture and natural knowledge of the inhabitants of the former lands known as Lithuanian Ruthenia. In later documents, the author also used the surname form “Federowski,” which is why both spellings appear in the literature.

These materials are remarkable because they combine handwritten descriptions of plant use, historical vernacular names, and actual herbarium documentation in the form of dried specimens. As a result, they constitute a botanical, ethnographic, and historical source at the same time.

Rediscovery of the materials in the University of Warsaw Herbarium

In 2012, during the reorganization of archival materials held in the University of Warsaw Herbarium, a set of previously unprocessed materials by Michał Fedorowski was rediscovered. The most important part of the find consisted of herbarium volumes in a format close to A3, gathered in 14 notebooks, as well as a field draft notebook and letters from the author to Józef Rostafiński.

  • WA Archive, ref. 1 – Useful plants among the Lithuanian people from the vicinity of Słonim, Wołkowysk and Prużana. Notebook I (1883).
  • WA Archive, ref. 2 and 3 – two notebooks of Medicinal herbs used by the Lithuanian people in the vicinity of Wołkowysk and Słonim, with an additional section on plants used in charms and magic (1882–1883).
  • WA Archive, ref. 4 – Lithuanian Herbarium. A collection of plants from the vicinity of Wołkowysk and Słonim, with the names given to them by the local people. Notebook I.
  • WA Archive, ref. 6 – ten untitled notebooks containing additional herbarium documentation with vernacular plant names.
  • WA Archive, ref. 5 – a field draft notebook and two letters from Michał Fedorowski to Józef Rostafiński.

Useful plants…

The notebook Useful plants among the Lithuanian people from the vicinity of Słonim, Wołkowysk and Prużana. Notebook I was created in 1883. It is devoted to plants used as food, as raw material for obtaining oil, fibers and dyes, and for making everyday objects by the inhabitants of the former eastern borderlands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

This work consists of two parts: the author’s manuscript (57 pages) and 15 plates with mounted plant specimens. The plates present 53 species, but many more are mentioned in the text itself – 209 in total. The material was arranged according to the questions from Józef Rostafiński’s 1883 questionnaire. Eight chapters were distinguished in the manuscript: cereals, vegetables, greens, fruits, ornamental plants, fibers/plaiting/down, oil, and dyes. A separate section contains notes on the uses of certain trees and shrubs.

Research on this notebook established modern equivalents of historical vernacular plant names, identified the surviving specimens, and showed that this type of documentation can serve as a model example of combining ethnographic and herbarium data. The result of this work was the source publication: Useful plants… by Michał Fedorowski – a work rediscovered after 130 years.

Medicinal herbs…

The two notebooks of Medicinal herbs… were created in 1882–1883 and document folk medicine as well as the magical uses of plants in the area of present-day Belarus. They are most probably the earliest surviving herbaria prepared by Fedorowski.

Together, the two notebooks contain 108 herbarium specimens. Thanks to their survival, it was possible to identify species even where the author used only vernacular plant names. In the research, names established on the basis of the specimens themselves were compared with the nomenclature later used by Fedorowski in Lud białoruski na Rusi Litewskiej, which made it possible to capture the differences between the original field documentation and the later printed study.

The publication devoted to Medicinal herbs… includes a transcription of the manuscript, photographs of the specimens, an account of the history of the herbaria, and a description of the conservation carried out in 2015. The result of this work was the publication: The herbarium Medicinal herbs… by Michał Fedorowski as documentation of ethnographic research.

Lithuanian Herbarium and additional herbarium documentation

The Lithuanian Herbarium (WA Archive, ref. 4) differs from the two works described above. It does not contain extensive comments on plant uses, but primarily the specimens themselves and the vernacular names assigned to them. It is therefore especially valuable as a source for research on folk plant nomenclature.

The rediscovered set is also associated with ten untitled notebooks (WA Archive, ref. 6), which represent additional herbarium documentation. They contain plant specimens together with vernacular names, but lack a more extensive descriptive layer.

History of the collections

The surviving letters from Michał Fedorowski to Józef Rostafiński show that the herbaria were connected with the developing research of the 1880s on vernacular plant names and plant use. Some of the materials were sent to Rostafiński in Kraków and then – in accordance with the author’s wishes – were to be passed on to Zygmunt Gloger and his museum in Jeżewo. The later history of the whole set is not entirely clear, but the materials were associated, among others, with the Museum of Industry and Agriculture in Warsaw and with the collections of the University of Warsaw Botanic Garden.

It is also known that at least one further notebook from this series is now held in the Manuscript Department of the University of Warsaw Library, which shows that the surviving Fedorowski/Federowski material was dispersed among different institutions in the 20th century.

Significance of the research

Research on Michał Fedorowski’s herbaria has shown that these are not only historical herbarium objects, but also exceptional sources for the history of ethnobotany in Central and Eastern Europe. They combine botanical documentation, vernacular plant nomenclature, and knowledge about food, medicine, craft, and magical practices. Thanks to the preservation of the specimens themselves, it was possible to verify the meaning of historical names and to interpret content that would otherwise have remained ambiguous without the herbarium evidence.

Project publications