Lawyering the mistletoe

“Fridlysta växter” is a book in Swedish about plants and somewhat-allied organisms protected by law in Sweden. As usual, illustrator Bo Mossberg´s name is more prominent on the front cover than that of the actual author, one Hans Rydberg. The reason is Mossberg´s local fame in Sweden – I suppose we could call him “the Lars Jonsson of plant and mushroom illustrations”. The book, published in 1995, was a collaboration with the Swedish “Sierra Club”, the Naturskyddsföreningen (NF). It´s both a field guide of sorts and an extended pitch for the specific form of environmentalism represented by the NF. Since the work is in Swedish, it´s of limited use to outsiders, but could perhaps be an interesting collectors´ item if you like plant illustrations. A weird detail is that the list of protected plant species at Swedish Wikipedia is from 1996, suggesting that very few updates have been made since the time this little book was published!

Rydberg argues that the entire system of making specific plant species “protected by law” doesn´t really help much. The right of landowners to exploit their land always takes precedence, and the best way to save threatened plant species isn´t to protect them one by one, but rather to shield entire areas from outside exploitation. After all, plants are part of wider eco-systems while being less mobile than many animals. Also, most of the legal protection is local or regional rather than national. Only the orchid family is protected all over Sweden. Nor is there a correlation between a plant being rare and a plant being legally protected!

That being said, Rydberg is strongly into the myth of “biodiversity”, something Nature is not (despite the romantic conceptions of many Green activists). He admits that floral diversity is often the result of *human* activity, most notably certain old fashioned agricultural practices. Take away these, and Nature suddenly becomes more homogenous (butterflies follow the same patterns). But if so, eco-activists must admit that they are making a human-centered choice between two human-created landscapes, not choosing “natural biodiversity”.

Otherwise, I loved the book for all the weird facts (or factoids?) it contains. Thus, it turns out that a species of bacteria is protected by the Swedish nanny state. Well, almost: Nostoc zederstedtii (the scientific name of this Something) is a blue-green alga and visible to the naked eye, but research suggest that these algae are actually closer to the kingdom of the bacteria, where they form a sub-group all their own known as cyanobacteria. The species in question can´t be plucked (or whatever it is humans do with cyanobacteria) in Lake Vettasjärvi in Lapland. Skipper, you have been warned. The lichen Letharia vulpina is protected, which makes me wonder, since it was used in bygone times to poison wolves – another protected species and apparently a favorite of the Swedish conservationist movement. Could there be a connection, LOL? Many of the protected species grow at the small island of Rörö off the Swedish west coast, including a highly aberrant variety of raspberry, known in proper Latin as “Rubus idaeus f. anomalus”. Hybrids where one of the parent species is legally protected are sometimes also legally protected – and sometimes not. (I suppose we could call this the “one seed rule” or something to that effect.)

There is also an interview with a bureaucrat at the agency responsible for environmental protection. It, too, is fun reading. Thus, you can´t remove orchids – unless you mow the lawn (or, I suppose the golf course) when it (weirdly) suddenly becomes OK to simply move on over the damn things. “Remove” is to be interpreted very broadly in other contexts, though. Thus, you can´t take a legally protected species even if it has been removed by somebody else and then simply left for dead. You can pluck the flowers of a legally protected species at your own backyard, provided *you* planted them there from seeds bought at a respectable vendor, but you can´t remove them from areas outside your private property even if you suspect they are feral descendant of your own legally reared plants. In the county of Västmanland, landowners can remove and sell mistletoe from their trees, but in the rest of the country, they can only fell the trees and destroy the mistletoe, but not sell it…

If you are a Paleo-Pagan Druid living in Sweden, the pro tip would be to buy land in Västmanland...

LOL!

Wow, do you need to be a lawyer to sort these things out? Gotta love it! OK, I admit. I read books like “Fridlysta växter” mostly for the entertainment factor…