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…

Triple organism

This is a very short clip (only about 4 minutes) which is nevertheless staggering in its implications. For 150 years, scientists assumed that a lichen is a double organism, consisting of algae (or cyanobacteria) living in symbiosis with an ascomycete fungus (or, in rare cases, a basidiomycete ditto). Recently, however, scientists realized that most lichens are *triple* organisms formed from algae (or cyanobacteria) and *both* ascomycetes and basidiomycetes. The basidiomycete component of the matrix has been overlooked for one and a half century!

Hmmm…

This opens up interesting possibilities, wouldn´t you say? And remember, we are talking about lichens, which have been studied by science for a long time. What if science doesn´t even *look* for a phenomenon? Say Bigfoot in your backyard, astrological aspects in the blue sky above, or Illuminati in the JFK administration…

Pondering. 

Bacteria for boys

“The Pictorial Encylopedia of Plants and Flowers” by F A Novak is an originally Czech work. It has been translated to several foreign languages, including Swedish. As a kid, I and my best friend sneaked into the local library in secret to leaf through it. We had gotten into our tiny little heads that plants and flowers were somehow “girlie” and hence uncool for boys. Ha ha ha.

Actually, this huge volume contains a lot of cool stuff for boys, too: bacteria, cyanobacteria, algae, fungi, lichens and ferns. Plants? Flowers? But sure, most of the cyclopaedia does contain photos of flowery plants, unfortunately mostly in black-and-white. The editor did use the few colour plates relatively wisely. They feature orchids, the golden crocus, the poinsettia and…the fly agaric mushroom. More original is the inclusion of a colour photo of a…pineapple.

Not sure how to rate this somewhat strange product, which contains more illustrations than text (and hence information). Could work as a leaf-through volume on your book shelf (or the waiting room of a dentist?), but otherwise I say its use is limited and popularity somehow mysterious…

All hail to the lichens!

"Lichens of North America" may be the ultimate tour de force in botanical publishing, and comes with blurbs by Edward O. Wilson, Lynn Margulis and David Ehrenfeld. The lucky authors are Irwin M. Brodo, Sylvia Duran Sharnoff and Stephen Sharnoff.

The book starts off with about 100 pages of general information on lichens, these bizarre double organisms which seem to grow pretty much everywhere in nature. The general chapters are sufficiently popularized to be useful and interesting to the general reader. The rest of this work is a super-encyclopaedia of lichen species found in the United States and Canada, featuring range maps and...wait for it...high quality photos, all in colour?! It has keys, too, and could therefore be used as a field guide. However, I doubt you could bring an 800-page book with you on a field excursion. Try the mini-van!

"Lichens of North America" is a kind of HBW of the lichen world (HBW = Handbook of the Birds of the World). What a shame the lichens themselves can't appreciate it! I admit I was fascinated by the sometimes quite bizarre specimens shown in this volume. And yes, I recognized the reindeer lichens. Some of them grow in Florida?!

Well, what more can I say. All hail to the lichens! Five stars!!!

Please call the lichens, they are bored

A review of "The lichens and lichenicolous fungi of Sweden and Norway" 

This is an exceedingly boring checklist of 2271 species of lichens found in Sweden and Norway. No illustrations! The thing looks like a phone directory. Should we call the lichens, perhaps? They must be bored, spending all their life in a vast, dark, Scandinavian forest!

A profitable field guide

"Marine Fauna and Flora of Bermuda" by Wolfgang Sterrer is a macro-field guide covering 740 full-sized pages. Over 1500 species are described, most never before included in a general guide. Since many of the organisms in the waters of Bermuda can also be found in the West Indies or southeastern United States, the field guide can be used profitably in those areas, as well.

There are 228 black-and-white plates and 16 colour plates. The latter show invertebrates. Weirdly, each plate has a private corporate sponsor! Thus, the Bank of Bermuda sponsors the plate showing sea hares and other sea slugs. Thank you. By contrast, the Bank of Butterfield brings us sea squirts. It seems this work is "profitable" in more ways than one...

Organisms featured in this volume include cyanobacteria, fungi, lichens, amoebas, bristle worms, beard worms, spoon worms and (surprise) round worms. Biggest surprise: the Belted Kingfisher.

The Bermuda Triangle might indeed be dangerous, but perhaps not in the sense we expected!

Lichens feat. DJ Galloway and the TDV

"Tropical Lichens: Their systematics, conservation and ecology. The systematics association special volume no. 43" is the full name of this book, edited by D. J. Galloway. It's a super-scholarly work, suitable for budding lichenologists only.

Just listen to the chapter headings: "Lichenological observations in low montane rainforests of eastern Tanzania", "Evolutionary rates in the Teloschistaceae", "Tropical pyrenocarpous lichens, a phylogenetic approach"...

There's even an "Epilogue" by one TDV Swinscow.

If lichenology isn't your first love, Amazon also offers books on red algae, the "lower" Hamamelidae or the sunflower family of British Columbia. Not to mention process philosophy! ;-)