Toward the Research of Sources of Ethnobotanical Information about Russia in Czech Scientific Literature of the National Revival Period (J.S. Presl and P.S. Pallas)

The article deals with ethnobotanical information about Russia given in the works of J.S. Presl, the founder of Czech natural-scientific terminology and nomenclature (1791–1849), a representative of the second generation of the Czech national revival. When creating his scientific works, J.S. Presl often resorted to foreign Slavonic sources, primarily Polish and Russian. The article shows that the most important source for J.S. Presl in the process of creating an extensive botanical encyclopaedia on the flora of the entire globe in the description of the Russian flora were the works of academician P.S. Pallas, and he turned not only to his most famous botanical works, such as «Flora Rossica» (1784–1788), but he also used less known works. From the works of P.S. Pallas, J.S. Presl drew information on the use of plants for food, economic and medicinal properties of plants used by the peoples of Russia. The information borrowed by J.S. Presl from the works of P.S. Pallas was in some cases supplemented by the author on the basis of other sources. It was also revealed that some Russian lexemes cited by P.S. Pallas, through the works of J.S. Presl, entered as exotisms of Russian origin into the first dictionary of the Czech language of a new type, created in 1835–1839 by J. Jungmann.