This will test MILLIONS!!!

 

Or maybe not, LOL, but apparently the recent full moon in Capricorn excited our dear neighborhood astrologers. It´s in opposition to the Sun in Cancer (a Moon sign). Which I suppose means...something.

Since this is the Strawberry Moon, I certainly hope it means we´ll get more strawberries in our ice cream! Because, yeah, their absence from our treats might indeed "test millions". Duh!

Blott Sverige svenska gubbar har

 

Credit: Alpdake

Har Aftonbladets chefsideologer redan åkt på semester? Blev nämligen lite förbryllad när de inte använde jordgubbsdiskussionen till att slå ett slag för arbetskraftsinvandring. En förvirrad artikel säger t.o.m. att svenska jordgubbar inte är någon rättighet?! 

Fast det kanske beror på att det ser lite väl "kapitalistiskt" ut att importera säsongsarbetare till "plantagerna". Alltså vill man undvika frågan. 

Det är således bättre att inmundiga importerade jordgubbar plockade av slavarbetare i utlandet. Åtminstone om man är socialdemokrat.

Eller?   

Jag fattar att ingen vill plocka jordgubbar

Svenska jordgubbar är ingen rättighet

Good news or soylent bees?

 

A propos Anton´s latest video on YouTube: like everyone else, I assumed the "bizarre discovery" was that honeybees EAT DEAD HUMAN BODIES and that this somehow ends up in our honey, making it SOYLENT GREEN. 

Instead, the (non)bizarre discovery is that millions of mining bees live at a New York cemetery and turn out to be extremely important pollinators of commercial crops (in this case, apples). Which might mean that the "bee apocalypse" has been postponed...again. Thank god, by the way!

I prefer apples to soylent any day.  

Äppelskrutt

 

- Äpplen? Vilka jävla äpplen? 

Hur ska man tolka det här? Att SVT öppet tar ställning för regeringens mest kontroversielle minister, eller vad? Ha ha, nu kommer anmälningarna att hagla stenhårt. Valkampanjen senare i år kanske blir väldigt intressant, trots allt...

Leif GW anklagar SVT för äppelaktion

Äppelaktion mot Leif GW Perssons sommarstuga

Svartklädda personer hotade min familj

Just call Sihanouk

 

Why didn´t Kim just call King Sihanouk and ask him to send over some really tasty apples? 

Talleyrand of the arts, Raphael of flowers

 

Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759-1840) was a Belgian painter who spent most of his life in France. He managed to survive all the changes and upheavals of the French revolution and its aftermath, and has been (unflatteringly) called "the Talleyrand of the Arts"! More flatteringly, perhaps, he is also known as the Raphael of flowers...

Redouté´s most generous patron was Napoleon´s wife, the empress Joséphine, but he was also on good terms with the courts of Louis XVI, Charles X and Louis Philippe. I recently bought a small Taschen book containing reprints of the plates from Redouté´s magnum opus "Les Roses", published in 1817-1824. Yes, it shows roses. 

While various reprints of the rose illustrations are readily available, the original water colors (bought by French king Charles X) are mostly unaccounted for and are apparently sold for crazy sums when they occasionally resurface. The earliest editions of the book itself are kept under lock and key in several European libraries, since art thieves have sometimes cut out some of the plates and sold them on the black market!

My kingdom for a rose? 

Blott Sverige svenska jordgubbar har

 

Lite Al Capone över det hela. "They got him on a technicality". Fast Jordgubben själv verkar ha gått under jorden i NATO-landet Turkiet...

"Jordgubben" misstänks för bedrägeri med jordgubbar

A rose by any other...metric?!

 

I´m so bad at botany that I didn´t realize that there are actually wild roses in Sweden. Wild, as opposed to feral. And I have a weird way of suppressing knowledge of those, too - do I subconsciously fear the thornes of feral roses? 

I was even more surprised when I realized that a rose plant can grow two or three meters high, often at tree trunks?! Some checking in a voluminous flora at the local library confirmed the above (ChatGPT was lying as usual - but it did get the "wild" and "large" parts right). 

Does this mean anything, except that I´m in need of reading more botany books (I won´t)? Probably not, but it must have been last year´s strangest realization!

Of mice, men and cherry blossom

Evidence for Lamarckism? Or as the old heresy is apparently called today, "transgenerational epigenetic inheritence". Note that the studies were made on mice, not people. But why cherry blossom, I wonder?

"Memories" pass between generations

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…

Manly stuff

“The Private Life of Plants” isn't as spectacular as David Attenborough's later foray into the kingdom of Plantae and Fungi, “Kingdom of Plants 3D”, but that's mostly a function of the camera technology. Otherwise, all the bizarre stuff is here: 500 year old strangler figs, the Venus fly trap, the pitcher plant, the giant water lily, or the perfectly ordinary bramble – ordinary, that is, until you film it with time-lapse photography, revealing that the bramble bush is about as aggressive as an expansive human empire…

Somehow, I got even more paranoid about the houseplants surrounding me as we speak, after watching clips from this six-part series! As a kid, I assumed that plants were boring and somehow “girlie”, but it seems they are just as cool as sharks or mountain lions, ha ha.

Finding God in Concord. Or at least berries...

"Wild Fruits" is book based on an unfinished manuscript written by Henry David Thoreau, otherwise mostly known as the author of "Walden". The manuscript was discovered posthumously but not properly published until recently. Christian Science Monitor calls it "an important literary event...well worth any nature lover's attention". Since "Wild Fruits" is unfinished, the book does give a very unkempt appearance, a bit like a wild forest perhaps? It's part cultural history, part natural history, and part poetry. Of course, Thoreau also bemoans modern civilization, while expressing his religious and philosophical views. Like his colleague Emerson, Thoreau was a Transcendentalist.

The editor of "Wild Fruits", Bradley P Dean, dwells on Thoreau's pantheist views in an introductory section. Thoreau explicitly wanted to find God in Nature, and describe its divine features. He wanted a "Bible" drawn not from Egyptian or Babylonian sources, but from New England. In his journals, Thoreau wrote that muskrat houses (sic) will be mentioned in his New Testament, and during a trip to Mount Katahdin, the author experienced something akin to a mystical vision, during which he got "contact" with "the real world". Nature also made him understand the mystery of spirit, matter and body. "In Wildness is the preservation of the World".

While this open religious preaching seems to be absent from "Wild Fruits", Thoreau's almost sacramental view of Nature is an important part of the context of the projected book. Presumably, when Thoreau calls the swamps were high blueberries grow "sacred places" while attacking privately owned huckleberry fields as "cursed spots", he means this quite literally. Thoreau writes that "we occupy the heaven of the gods without knowing it", and says concerning our present predicament that "it would imply the regeneration of mankind if they were to become elevated enough to truly worship sticks and stones".

The manuscript also contains Zivilisationskritik, often through the lens of a young Thoreau picking berries in the forest. As already mentioned, the author disliked private property. As a boy, Thoreau was chased by the owner of a cranberry field, not realizing that some parts of the forest were privately owned! However, he also disliked the rapaciousness and aggressive antics of other berry-pickers, who were presumably out to earn a fast buck. The tragedy of the commons? Even as an adult, Thoreau disliked the human encroachment on the sacred forests around Walden, complaining about being disturbed by a noisy party of blueberry-pickers while eating a supper on milk and blueberries. The author at one point makes a comparison between aggressive pickers of berries, and White settlers stealing Indian and Mexican land.

Thoreau is suspicious of interstate trade and economic growth: "But the worst of it is that the emissaries of the towns come more for our berries than they do for our salvation". At another point, the author exclaims: "Why such haste to go from the huckleberry field to the college yard". Thoreau sees berry-picking as a kind of education (presumably in virtue, frugality or hard work), while his siblings apparently had a different attitude, waiting at home for Thoreau to return with his berries, so their parents could make pie... The sage of Walden Pond half-jokingly calls himself a "Mithridates among the berries", presumably a reference to the wilderness years of Persian king Mithridates VI, which made him hardy and completely immune to poison. But no, Thoreau wasn't actually against eating wild fruit. He brags about finding shad bushes and turning their berries into an appetizing pudding, while the local farmer (who had lived in the area for 70 years) had no idea such a plant even grew around his property. It also seems that even Thoreau occasionally needed cash, not just hardy muscles or puddings. He actually complains about a man owing him money trying to repay the debt in red huckleberries!

The material on natural and cultural history contains many references to Pliny, to older books on North American natural history, and discussions on what various berries are called in the languages of various American Indian nations. Thoreau also calls upon his own knowledge of the area around Concord, for instance when describing the high blueberry. Here, too, he retells some anecdotes. Apparently, his grandmother brought over the first ripe cherries of the year to her brother on the day of the Battle of Bunker Hill, 17 June 1775. The brother was confined in Concord Jail, since he was a Loyalist...

Those interested in buying "Wild Fruits" should note, however, that large parts of the book aren't particularly interesting. It is an unfinished work, after all. The shorter entries may sound like this: "Black Ash, September second". That's all Thoreau managed to tell us about this particular tree. I don't think Thoreau's observations and musings are suitable for the general public, although (ironically) this book is much easier to read than "Walden". That being said, "Wild Fruits" might nevertheless fill a niche, perhaps on the shelves of cultural historians, really hard line botanists, or Thoreau aficionados.

A rose named Peace

The Austrian public service network ORF has produced a long list of laid back nature documentaries about everything except charismatic African megafauna. Although I frequently find them a bit *too* laid back (and very Austria-centered), I admit that I'm also tired of watching lions and hyenas tearing the flesh off wildebeest carcasses!

None of that here.

“Rose: Queen of Flowers” really is a documentary about roses, and perhaps rose-breeders. Featured cultivars include “Peace”, given to the founding members of the United Nations. We are also introduced to “Michele Serrault”, which took 30 years to “create” until the spots on its petals were perfected. A cultivar not named was so sturdy that it survived a flood, while all the surrounding trees died! Perhaps it was grown in an organic garden? One rose not featured is the legendary black rose, since it doesn't exist…yet. We also learn that aspirin or soft drinks don't make roses last longer in winter...

Since I don't know much about Juliet's and Henry Tudor's favorite flower, I can't really tell whether this production is good, bad or just beautiful. But yes, it's probably worth a watch if Rosaceae is your thing.

Brambles, my lord

"Brambles of the British Isles" is a book by E.S. Edees, A. Newton and D.H. Kent. It was published by the Ray Society in 1988. The work is an account of those brambles growing wild in Britain and Ireland. But, to quote the humble authors, "it is not, however, a complete record of the genus Rubus in these islands, but rather a further milestone on the road to that elusive but desirable destination". Apparently, brambles are difficult from a taxonomical perspective - if the authors had described every local taxon with a distinctive appearance as a new species, the number of described species might have soared from 300 to 500! And remember, we're just talking the British Isles here.

Our authors also reveal that the classic in the field of "brambling", W.C.R. Watson's "Handbook of the Rubi of Great Britain and Ireland" isn't always reliable, since the old know-it-all simply refused to admit that he couldn't indentify every bramble in the south-east of England! (The authors knew him personally.)

As already indicated, "Brambles of the British Isles" describes hundreds of species of the genus Rubus. Range maps are included at the back of the book. The black-and-white photos don't seem to be of the best quality, and don't show all the species. It's a reference work, neither more nor less. Still, four stars for this bizarre effort at "brambling". I mean, Bramble sounds like the name of a senile member of the House of Lords...