Hugo
Sjörs is no more. He was born on the Sjörs farm from
which he
took his surname. Far from secondary schools he followed correspondence
courses until entering Uppsala University in the late 1930s. First
inclined towards zoology (not the least dinosaurs!) in his studies, he
soon turned into plant ecology and the renowned Department of Plant
Biology, where G. Einar Du Rietz had taken over the world’s
oldest chair in plant ecology from Rutger Sernander. This department,
internationally known as ‘Växtbio’, was a
very popular
place, particularly among those academics that were more inclined
towards wellingtons and mosquito repellents rather than laboratories
and tail suits.
There Hugo took up mire ecology, perhaps after a summer as a field assistant for older colleagues in Muddus, an area of old-growth forest and peatlands in Swedish Lapland. His interest turned towards his home district in the central Swedish uplands. This area is phytogeographically interesting, being a border zone between the boreal zone or taiga and the boreo-nemoral zone further south. Extensive field studies in several remote areas, reached on bicycle, followed, interrupted by long periods of military service in the early 1940s. The thesis was ready in 1948. Although it was published in Swedish, it has become a classic in mire ecology. He stabilized the terminology of mire features and mire types and described their geographical distributions. When reading his book the reader may first think that its content is rather trivial, until realizing that this is where all these things, now found in textbooks, are described in detail for the first time. Very important is also his detailed studies on Skattlösbergs Stormosse, where he explored the small-scale relations between water quality and plant distributions. His results were further elucidated in a paper in English from 1950.
Hugo soon got a position as a lecturer (docent) at Lund University where he continued his research on mire vegetation, now also together with his own students. He was particularly interested in the relations between vegetation and chemical conditions. As a guest researcher in Canada he also made important contributions to the understanding of Canadian peatlands, particularly in the Hudson Bay lowlands.
After some years as an associate professor (laborator) at the Royal School of Forestry in Stockholm Hugo came back to Växtbio in 1962 as the successor of G. Einar Du Rietz. The Uppsala and the Montpellier schools of phytosociology had then dominated much of the European scene in its field for some decades, but David Shimwell noted in his textbook from 1971 that Uppsala recently had “shown some lack of interest in classification”. Hugo was instrumental in this lack of interest. He had never been keen on classification, particularly not hierarchical. During his time as professor we saw more interest in vegetation dynamics and phytogeography. Växtbio was an ideal base for such studies, where vegetation data had been collected already during the early 20th century. The department also made important contributions to the International Biological Program in the 1970s. The field of population ecology was adopted early, and John Harper gave lectures at the department at least twice.
During this time Hugo was very busy as an administrator, teacher and inspiring supervisor, and his ideas mainly appeared in the publications of his students. Among his own publications pleas for a better protection of nature in Sweden dominated in the form of articles in Swedish journals and as stenciled reports and petitions.
Hugo retired in 1980 and could then return to his own research. This included the mosses he collected in Muddus and which had waited in the envelopes for 60 years before becoming identified and published. With a student he also published a paper on changes in plant distribution and water quality on Skattlösbergs Stormosse, where he himself had collected the original data 50 years earlier. Another paper based on his own old data appeared in the Journal of Ecology, where he now published for the first time at the age of 87. His last paper was about the plants around the home for aged people where he lived with his wife Gunnel who passed away two years ago.
Few people in the academic world are as humble as Hugo was. He never elbowed his way forward. You had to listen carefully to catch what he said, but if you did you were rewarded.
Ingvar
Backéus Håkan Rydin
Department of Ecology and Evolution / Plant Ecology
Uppsala University
www.imcg.net last
update 14-03-2010