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Storying Salicornia: Cuisines, Coastlines and Salty Futures in Europe

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  • Anna S. Antonova,
  • L. Sasha Gora
Anna S. Antonova
TUM School of Social Sciences and Technology
L. Sasha Gora
University of Augsburg
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3197/WHPPP.63876246815944

Published 2026-11-11

Keywords

  • Salicornia,
  • Activism,
  • Blue Humanities,
  • Critical Plant Studies,
  • Food Cultural History,
  • Critical Conservation Studies
    • ...More
    Less

How to Cite

Antonova, Anna S., and L. Sasha Gora. 2026. “Storying Salicornia: Cuisines, Coastlines and Salty Futures in Europe”. Plant Perspectives, November. https://doi.org/10.3197/WHPPP.63876246815944.

Copyright (c) 2026 Anna S. Antonova, L. Sasha Gora

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

This article focuses on the cultural lives of the saline plant salicornia and its entanglement with cuisines, nature conservation and market dynamics across European coastlines. A succulent native to salt marshes, beaches and other brackish ecosystems, salicornia has a long history of being foraged; throughout the 2010s and early 2020s, it has evolved into a gourmet ingredient, resulting in its commercial cultivation. Yet the plant’s growth, harvesting and commercial availability are all threaded through with complex interrelations between coastal communities, their environments and their envisioned futures. Using case studies from culinary nature conservation and climate justice activism in Venice, Italy, and Burgas, Bulgaria, we show how salicornia comes to embody the strategies communities employ to affirm and uphold their stakes in their coastal wetland landscapes. In this way, our own rendition of salicornia offers a fusion of blue humanities, food cultural history and both critical plant and conservation studies.

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