CODES OF SLAV CULTURES
journal of slavic folkloristics and ethno-lingvistics

No. 1

PLANTS 

The phytonym repertoire differs from the Slavic North to the South depending on climate. It is mainly the edible plants, fruits and vegetables, that have obscene connotations. The subject of analysis were the following plants: grape, fig, paprika, cucumber, cabbage, corn, potato, pumpkin, tomato, onion, walnut, bean and hemp. Some of these have masculine attributes (grape, corn, cucumber) or feminine attributes (fig, bean, pumpkin), but some ambivalent plants were registred too (paprika, cabbage, walnut). One of the characteristics of Slavic folk riddles is the text subject anthropomorfisation (anthroponym, anthropomorf apelative and personal pronoun as subject), and stress of sex differencesef (e.g., old man : old woman). Slavic erotic riddles may contain some international motifs included in different structure texts and different denotatum. Some riddle types common to both Slavic North and South were described.

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