Mown meadows with scattered trees were a characteristic of the old Swedish landscape.  It has been an established truth that the botanists, particularly R. Sernander and H. Hesselman, did not understand that the meadows would turn into forests when abandoned, whereas the human geographer M. Sjöbeck in several publications from 1927 onwards made this clear. This view was supported by, i.a,. L.-G. Romell.

 We have scrutinized the literature and the minutes of the Plant Biology Seminar in Uppsala from 1892 to 1944, in order to understand Sernander’s views. Hesselman considered the matter uncertain. Sernander probably understood the dynamics also before 1927, but his standpoint was influenced by a wish to restore the postglacial broadleaved forests of which he saw the meadows as degraded relicts. This could be done by leaving meadows for free development. Gradually he saw the need also to maintain meadows and the cultural landscape as such. Several other botanists, e.g. G. Samuelsson and G. Einar Du Rietz, already early on understood the dependence of meadows on human management.