Over thousands of years, humans have accumulated a vast body of knowledge and tradition around the use of wild plants for food, health, vitality and well-being. These plants also flavour our food and drinks, perfume and give colour to beauty products and provide incense used by many religious and spiritual practices and traditions.

This deep traditional knowledge, at first passed down orally from generation to generation, eventually became systematised and codified into the world’s great wild plants traditions.

The collection of wild plants, if sustainable, can contribute to giving a value to natural or semi-natural ecosystems, hence protecting these ecosystems and habitats from destruction; and can provide an important source of income to poorer households in many countries across the world.