"Druss" wrote in message
...

I thought this also applied to seeds, and thus would apply to fruit.
Always
makes me laugh when I see so many "cooking outdoors" style programs on TV,
I
enjoy them but think everytime he picks something to eat and films it he's
racking up an awful lot of evidence for the prosecution.
Duncan

I believe that it only applies to seed of plants listed on schedule 8 of the
wildlife and countryside act (although I'm willing to be corrected).
Essentially, if it's rare then don't pick it, but then that ain't rocket
science.

The message
from Kay Easton contains these words:

And that's fair enough, when you think about it. The last thing we want is
people wanering about diggint things up from the wild... I wonder if that
would apply to truffles?

They're fruit bodies, aren't they, rather than the entire 'plant'?

Yes, but without fruit bodies, they don't spread.

Still, there are plenty left where they grow so I suspect that no harm
is done.

--
Tony
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In article , Anthony E Anson
writes
The message
from Kay Easton contains these words:

And that's fair enough, when you think about it. The last thing we want is
people wanering about diggint things up from the wild... I wonder if that
would apply to truffles?

They're fruit bodies, aren't they, rather than the entire 'plant'?

Yes, but without fruit bodies, they don't spread.

Do they not? Some other fungi spread asexually - dry rot, for example.

But what I was referring to was that the Act says you mustn't dig up
plants, not that you mustn't pick fruit.


--
Kay Easton

Edward's earthworm page:
http://www.scarboro.demon.co.uk/edward/index.htm

In article ,
Colin Davidson wrote:
"Nick Maclaren" wrote in message
...

But when you think about it a bit more deeply, it is a very BAD
idea. It would apply to truffles if the lawyers regarded them
as plants. The following are major disadvantages:

1) The law is phrased in such a way as to create property
rights that did not exist previously. Yes, the landowner can
assign and sell the permission, just as for game. This is yet
another theft of rights from the public, like the game laws and
enclosures.

Should the public have the right to uproot a wild plant from someone elses
land? Taking a part of the plant in such a way as to not kill it is one
thing. Removing it and putting it somewhere else is another.

It is a mistake to think of most plants as individuals - they are
part of a population. My point here was that a public right that had
existed from time immemorial, and had been enshrined in English law
for nearly two millennia, was taken away and given to the 'landowners'.
Exactly as with the Norman game laws and the Enclosures Acts.

2) The law does nothing to help protect plants against the
real abusers. There are many ways in which it can be bypassed,
from slipping the landowner some cash (which is legal) to many
effective illegal methods.

True enough. The landowner does still have the right to allow someone to dig
up roots. Or he can do it himself. And were I to choose to dig up some
horseradish roots from the wild I'm sure I'd get away with it. Were I to dig
up some wild strawberries and take them home for my garden I'd get away with
it. I choose not to, though. But does the fact that I would get away with it
mean that it should be legal?

Not necessarily, in itself. But why should the public's rights be
taken away and given to a small group of people without compensation?

Furthermore, the Act is written in such a way that it will be almost
impossible to prosecute people who take plants without permission and
for gain. I can see lots of loopholes, and there was and is no attempt
to assist enforceability.

3) It prevents people from stocking their property with local
strains of trees and shrubs, thus reducing biodiversity, and even
threatening the very plants the law is claimed to protect! Think
bluebells for an example, and see Rackham.

A fair point; but do we want people raiding their local woods for wild
bluebells?

YES. YES! A THOUSAND TIMES, YES, YES, YES!!!!!

You say that you think ecologically - THEN DO SO!

For the many plants that are almost entirely endangered by habitat
loss and/or predation by deer etc., one of the best hopes of their
long-term survival and maintenance of genetic variation is for them
to be naturalised in gardens, small areas of woodland and so on.
It is probably the ONLY HOPE for the maintenance of the local strains
of such such plants.

God help us, the result of this Act will be to encourage conservation
by the naturalisation of British Standard wildflower strains, with
perhaps half-a-dozen inbred ones of each species. And, of course, the
hybridisation with imported species, as the Hobdens point out.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

In article , Druss wrote:

So with 60 odd million people and gawd knows how many houses, how many
Bluebells should we allow people to dig up, purely for domestic reasons.

Given the way that bluebells propagate, and the proportion of those
that will get their hands dirty, as many as they like. No serious
damage is caused by such activity.

Sorry, but the law was really introduced to prevent the comercial
explotation of wild resources, which was rife in the past. Whole areas of
woodland were dug up and every trace of the bulbs were removed, and thus
they never ever recovered.

You are, I am afraid, one of the Great Gullible British Public, and
have swallowed the bullshit put out by those skilled at being
Economical With The Truth.

Yes, there were such abuses. Yes, something needed to be done. But
there were MANY ways of dealing with the abuses without creating the
harmful effects. However, the hidden agenda was precisely to use the
excuse of conservation to introduce another property right, just as
the excuse of terrorism is used to reduce other rights.

Also, you are wrong about the failure to recover in the case of
bluebells and ramsons. It just isn't feasible to clean a woodland
that thoroughly - the ONLY way to eliminate them is to destroy the
habitat or introduce an even more aggressive competitor.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

On Wed, 7 May 2003 15:09:46 +0100, Anthony E Anson
wrote:

The message
from "Colin Davidson" contains these words:

Yes, definitely. But that is thinking ecologically, and not legally.

Sorry. Bad habit of mine, that is

Ah, but everyone has their agenda - and it's not difficult to spot Nick's...

Nick? An ecological frame of mind too I would have thought.


Huss

Grow a little garden

spam block - for real addy, reverse letters of second level domain.

On Wed, 7 May 2003 15:12:21 +0100, Anthony E Anson
wrote:

The message
from "Colin Davidson" contains these words:

Yes and no. In not allowing people to uproot wild plants we prevent people
doing unneccessary damage. I can think of stands of wild strawberries I've
seen that have been decimated by people digging them up, presumably to take
home for their gardens. But then there are patches of horseradish that seem
to go on forever that wouldn't suffer in the least from some uprooting. It'd
be awfully hard to have a balanced law allowing uprooting of plants in some
scenarios but not others.

I eye these horseradish forests with deep suspicion. I *KNOW* that some
of them I pass regularly have been sprayed...

For what? To make them grow more, or to quench them?


Huss
Grow a little garden

spam block - for real addy, reverse letters of second level domain.

(Nick Maclaren) wrote in news:b9bqlt$d74$1
@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk:

It is a mistake to think of most plants as individuals - they are
part of a population. My point here was that a public right that had
existed from time immemorial, and had been enshrined in English law
for nearly two millennia, was taken away and given to the 'landowners'.
Exactly as with the Norman game laws and the Enclosures Acts.

OK, I agree mostly but I think that's a bit much.

'Time immemorial': no such thing! You mean 'for rather a long time'.

And 'enshrined in English law for nearly 2 millennia' - are you sure about
this? The Roman empire is well-documented, but not *that* well-documented,
so far as I am aware?

There is no legal tradition that can really claim continuity over that long
a period, common law or no common law. I'm pretty sure that no-one has a
definitive answer to 'what was the law on removal of plants from private
land in early medieval Mercia' (though I'd love to know if you do!)

I think what you mean is 'it used (so far as we know) not to be illegal' -
that is not the same as saying 'it used to be a right'. I'm prepared to
accept that by 2000, stuff that isn't illegal is mostly rights, but I would
argue the toss over the same applying in 1000.

Victoria

In article ,
Victoria Clare wrote:
(Nick Maclaren) wrote in news:b9bqlt$d74$1
:

It is a mistake to think of most plants as individuals - they are
part of a population. My point here was that a public right that had
existed from time immemorial, and had been enshrined in English law
for nearly two millennia, was taken away and given to the 'landowners'.
Exactly as with the Norman game laws and the Enclosures Acts.

OK, I agree mostly but I think that's a bit much.

'Time immemorial': no such thing! You mean 'for rather a long time'.

Eh? No, I don't! I mean time immemorial - i.e. dating back to before
the earliest records.

And 'enshrined in English law for nearly 2 millennia' - are you sure about
this? The Roman empire is well-documented, but not *that* well-documented,
so far as I am aware?

Yes, I am sure. And it is that well documented. I can't tell you
the exact details, but one relevant term is "res nullius".

There is no legal tradition that can really claim continuity over that long
a period, common law or no common law. I'm pretty sure that no-one has a
definitive answer to 'what was the law on removal of plants from private
land in early medieval Mercia' (though I'd love to know if you do!)

Yes, there is. Many of them. You are almost certainly right that
there is no DEFINITIVE answer, but there are some pretty good records.
Certainly, enough to prove that there was no crime comparable to
that introduced by that Act.

I think what you mean is 'it used (so far as we know) not to be illegal' -
that is not the same as saying 'it used to be a right'. I'm prepared to
accept that by 2000, stuff that isn't illegal is mostly rights, but I would
argue the toss over the same applying in 1000.

The right to which I am referring is the immunity from arrest etc.
And, yes, that was a right then as it was until recently.

I can't tell you what the situation was in civil law.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

The message
from Kay Easton contains these words:

Yes, but without fruit bodies, they don't spread.

Do they not? Some other fungi spread asexually - dry rot, for example.

The mycelium will work its way outwards, but that's not what I meant.
That sort of spreading is very local and comes to a halt if the pH is
wrong, or the tree cover changes, or if they come up to a road, or
stream.

Mycelial strands when they meet sometimes join and form fruit bodies.
These give rise to spores which are microscopic, and when released into
the air can travel on the wind anywhere in the world. Fungal spores have
been detected in samples taken from high in the stratosphere.

The chance that one will land somewhere conducive to growth in
conditions which encourage it are the reciprocal of astronomical, which
is why each fruit body produces so many millions of spores.

But what I was referring to was that the Act says you mustn't dig up
plants, not that you mustn't pick fruit.

Fungi are not plants: they occupy a completely separate phylum.

--
Tony
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The message
from Hussein M. contains these words:

I eye these horseradish forests with deep suspicion. I *KNOW* that some
of them I pass regularly have been sprayed...

For what? To make them grow more, or to quench them?

Generally with weedkiller of some sort. Just about now, or perhaps a
little later, all the horseradish leaves will turn brown and crinkly.
Then up the come again.

The Highways Department never learns. They probably don't check on the
efficacy of what they did earlier in the year. Heaven forbid that they
should have to check on what they did the year before.

--
Tony
Replace solidi with dots to reply: tony/anson snailything zetnet/co/uk

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(Nick Maclaren) wrote in
:

In article ,
Victoria Clare wrote:
(Nick Maclaren) wrote in news:b9bqlt$d74$1
:

It is a mistake to think of most plants as individuals - they are
part of a population. My point here was that a public right that
had existed from time immemorial, and had been enshrined in English
law for nearly two millennia, was taken away and given to the
'landowners'. Exactly as with the Norman game laws and the
Enclosures Acts.

OK, I agree mostly but I think that's a bit much.

'Time immemorial': no such thing! You mean 'for rather a long time'.

Eh? No, I don't! I mean time immemorial - i.e. dating back to before
the earliest records.

I disagree. Early records aren't big on natural features at all, and
there many years of British history for which we have no written records
at all, let alone legal documentation and process. It is pure guesswork
to say that during that time people 'probably' did the same as what they
did later, or even earlier.

And 'enshrined in English law for nearly 2 millennia' - are you sure
about this? The Roman empire is well-documented, but not *that*
well-documented, so far as I am aware?

Yes, I am sure. And it is that well documented. I can't tell you
the exact details, but one relevant term is "res nullius".

So far as I was aware, that originally related to deserted, unclaimed or
abandoned property, or the spoils of war, and the idea was that things
belonged to the first claimant, who, thereafter, owned them. It may
relate to wildflowers too, but I haven't yet found any original sources
for this. I have found mention of 18th and 19th century interpretation
of Roman law, but that is unlikely to be accurate. Can you give me more
detail?

My understanding was that woodland would have been 'in use' and would
belong to a community or an individual (not 'the community' which is a
modern idea.) You might have got away with removing unimportant plants
like bluebells, but I suspect an attempt to walk off with something of
value like pignut would be met with a stick with nails on. And we don't
know enough about the early medieval period to say for sure that, say,
bluebells were *not* used for something that would cause the owner of
the woodland to assert their ownership.

There is no legal tradition that can really claim continuity over that
long a period, common law or no common law. I'm pretty sure that
no-one has a definitive answer to 'what was the law on removal of
plants from private land in early medieval Mercia' (though I'd love to
know if you do!)

Yes, there is. Many of them. You are almost certainly right that
there is no DEFINITIVE answer, but there are some pretty good records.
Certainly, enough to prove that there was no crime comparable to
that introduced by that Act.

There really isn't that much pre-Conquest - not unless this is new stuff
I am not aware of?

There are letters, edicts, the odd law, histories, charters - but really
not enough to say exactly what sort of law was actually being used day
to day in people's lives, particularly as the country was so fragmented
for so long. Even if you assume that South Britain stuck exactly to
Roman law as it was c 200 AD (and that Roman law said exactly what you
say it does) things are pretty certainly going to be different up in the
Danelaw, for example, or in early Irish-influenced Northumbria.

Unless the thinking has changed radically recently, the Carolingian
interpretation of 'Roman law' was pretty different to that of the Roman
Empire, and we really have no idea about 'common law' at all at that
date - and that goes doubles for isolated Britain.

(I like Rackham's work, but I think he does have a bit of a tendency to
say 'we have no mentions of X' and conclude something from that, when
really the only accurate thing we can conclude is that we have no
evidence for or against X, and that this is annoying.)

Hey, I think we are off topic...

Victoria

On 7 May 2003 20:35:09 GMT, (Nick Maclaren) wrote:


A fair point; but do we want people raiding their local woods for wild
bluebells?

YES. YES! A THOUSAND TIMES, YES, YES, YES!!!!!

You say that you think ecologically - THEN DO SO!

Nick, I quite follow your reasoning and umbrage at the legislation
but perhaps you have too much faith in human nature.

Take H. non-scripta. At the very least unfavourable you would have
well meaning (or perhaps simply appreciative) people digging up from a
colony of pure uncontaminated non-scripta, and then putting the plants
into a situation where in all likelihood any further sexual
reproduction carries grave risk from the Spaniard.

The most unfavourable scenario is, I suppose, workmen from some urban
parks department descending on bluebell woods to keep themselves up to
date with the latest designer vogue only to expose them to a similar
risk.

Sure you're probably not going to wipe out the species in the
localities where they can currently be found growing wild, but I think
we should give them a sporting chance to fend for themselves and, if
we like them so much, get some pure colonies of our own on tended land
- more or less protected from the Spaniard.

Anyway much better done on local initiative rather than on the
restrictive whimsies of whitehall bureaucrats. We agree there.

Respect

Hussein
Grow a little garden

spam block - for real addy, reverse letters of second level domain.

"Kay Easton" wrote in message
...
In article , Colin Davidson
writes

"Nick Maclaren" wrote in message
...

The same is true of those things on private land. It is one of the
relics of Roman law, as passed on by the 'Anglo-Saxons'. The game
laws are a legacy of the Norman banditry.

That infamous Countryside Act made the DIGGING UP of all plants
comparable to the taking of game, rather than the picking of fruit.

And that's fair enough, when you think about it. The last thing we want
is
people wanering about diggint things up from the wild... I wonder if that
would apply to truffles?

They're fruit bodies, aren't they, rather than the entire 'plant'?


Are truffles 'plants'?

"Kay Easton" wrote in message
...
In article , Druss
writes
"Nick Maclaren" wrote in message
...

In article ,
"Colin Davidson" writes:
| "Kay Easton" wrote in message
| ...
|
| And as wild flowers surely they are protected.
|
| I don't think they are. Not all wild flowers are protected.
|
| They are - it is an offence to take any plant without permission
of
the
| landowner, and I can't offhand think of any bit of the UK, apart
from
| perhaps below the high tide mark, that isn't owned by *someone*
|
| Depends on where you mean. A lot of land owned by the crown has
public
| access, and anything you can get to from said access is considered
fair
| game. Otherwise kids picking blackberries would be illegal, picking
| mushrooms, etc, would be illegal!

The same is true of those things on private land. It is one of the
relics of Roman law, as passed on by the 'Anglo-Saxons'. The game
laws are a legacy of the Norman banditry.

That infamous Countryside Act made the DIGGING UP of all plants
comparable to the taking of game, rather than the picking of fruit.

I thought this also applied to seeds, and thus would apply to fruit.
Always
makes me laugh when I see so many "cooking outdoors" style programs on
TV, I
enjoy them but think everytime he picks something to eat and films it
he's
racking up an awful lot of evidence for the prosecution.

No, you can pick flowers and fruits of plants that aren't on the highly
protected list.

See http://www.naturenet.net/law/wcagen.html#plants

This does say that it's not part of the law rather it's part of "common law"
which is a strange beast at best. Also says you can only do this on public
land. Guess trespass would come into the picture otherwise, that and
scrumping !.

I am sure they "could" prosecute if they wished, but don't bother due to the
uproar it would cause, but until someone tries it I guess i'll never be
sure.

Duncan

--
Kay Easton

Edward's earthworm page:
http://www.scarboro.demon.co.uk/edward/index.htm