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Paper short abstract

In Sweden’s production forests, the protected orchid Goodyera repens translates forest ecologies into politically actionable evidence. The orchid’s rhizomatic relations translate plant rights into legal force, troubling human exceptionalism and reading for disturbance-and-care in modern assemblages.

Paper long abstract

In Sweden’s vast production forests, the protected orchid Goodyera repens emerges as a small but unruly nonhuman holobiont whose multispecies power seemingly travels through databases, courts, certification schemes, and property regimes. The political charisma of this inconspicuous orchid (“Knärot” in Swedish) stands out in the Fenno-Scandinavian countries forest policy discourse. Feared and loathed by the conservative parties, (and by large Scandinavian deforestation companies) – for how reported sightings of this orchid might hinder clear-cutting, this small plant has become a beacon of biodiversity activism and a nonhuman figure of resistance to deforestation and diminishing biodiversity. This presentation tells a case story of how plant rights – pursued via the national species observation system “Artportalen” (in Swedish) and national environmental law – both disturb and fortify anthropocentric modern institutions such as science, law and democracy. Against human-exceptionalist binaries, G. repens becomes politically powerful in legal decision-making through its rhizomatic relations with fungi, insects, forest ecologies, environmental activists, a citizen science database, and government agencies. Seeking escape routes from the plantation modernity that favor human culture over nonhuman nature regardless of co-dependencies, the presentation follows the orchid’s distributed, dividual identities and rhizomatic journey across present-day Swedish forest politics. It also shows how situated more-than-human research can read for disturbance and care across legal assemblages that are themselves profoundly modern.