**3. Loss of plant utility following translocation of a species**

*'Plant names often reflect people's belief systems and oral histories'* [45, p. 1.171]. For example, quackgrass, originated in Europe and Central Asia, and was introduced to eastern North America by settlers in the eighteenth century [46]. It has since spread and naturalized urban and rural landscapes, been declared a weed in many states and provinces, and is the subject of substantial investments in time, money [47] and research to develop control methods that range from chemical pesticides to organic approaches using cover crops to prevent the spread [48].

Turn to any North American print or web reference on the weedy 'problem' of quackgrass— *Elymus repens* L., (syn. *Agropyron repens* L., *Elytrigia repens* (L.) Desv. ex Nevski), and the various common English names reflect beliefs and opinions about this plant that are relatively unflattering: couchgrass, twitch, quick grass, quitch grass, quitch, dog grass, quackgrass, scutch grass and witchgrass. However, in Lukomir, Bosnia and Herzegovina, for example, it is known as *piriki* [49], which, though used medicinally, translates from Bosnian (and also Croatian), to English as 'wheatgrass' [49]. *Piriki* then is a verbal reminder that this plant has utility as a cereal, albeit a poverty grain, that might be gathered in times of trouble such as the Bosnian War (1992–1995), when cultivating traditional cereal crops was diminished. Along with *vodenica mlini*, locally developed hydro-powered mills in Lukomir are supplied with water from wooden flumes to turn grindstones. When agriculture is practiced, cereal grains such as wheat, oats (*Avena sativa* L.), rye (*Secale sereale* L.), barley and corn are grown for flour.

In other parts of Europe, quackgrass was considered an important survival food during the First World War when seeds and rhizomes were ground into flour as a substitute for wheat and rye [46], while in Australia the rhizomes are ground sometimes into survival bread flour [50]. Before the First World War, it is reported that the mucilage exuded from quackgrass roots was as effective as glue that the United States imported a quarter-million pounds from Europe annually [51]. While quackgrass is not indigenous to North America, it soon became naturalized and, for example, the plants were used by the Okanagan-Colville peoples as a type of pit cooking container [52], while the White Mountain Apache Tribe of Arizona used quackgrass seeds for food [53]. In Ladakh, a region in Jammu and Kashmir, the northern-most state in India, powdered quackgrass rhizomes are used to traditionally treat irritated bladders and promote urination [54].
