Nature

Ireland’s Changing Flora: A Vital Report

If you read nothing else right now, please read Ireland’s Changing Flora: A Summary of the Results of Plant Atlas 2020. All the quotes and charts in this post are from that report, while the photographs are my own. The report is written in English and as Gaeilge.

A publication of the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland, and written in an accessible style, this vital report, a summary of a much longer book, charts what has been recorded of the changes in plant diversity in the last 20 years, based on the hard work of hundreds of recorders in the field. I’ve had the privilege to participate in a Rare Plant Monitoring Workshop (below, on Mizen Head) and every year I monitor three rare plants for the National Biodiversity Data Centre.

The results are, as you might expect, not happy. Here is a bar chart, for example, showing how Native Plants, Archaeophytes and Neophytes are trending. 

The chart shows that more than half of all natives have decreased, whereas the overwhelming majority of neophytes have increased. These figures are based on short term trends, i.e. since 1987.

Why does this matter?

The decline in awareness of plants has occurred when plants need our attention the most. Globally we know that 40% of plant species are threatened with extinction. Many insects and other forms of life depend on specific plants, so the extinction of plants leads in turn to the extinction of many other things. In the Ireland Red List, 18% of plant species are in one of the threat categories and a further 9% are on a waiting list because of insufficient data. Time is not on our side.

The report looks at examples of plants which have increased or decreased and our own experience in West Cork will readily confirm its findings. Sitka Spruce, of course is one of those that have increased enormously, but here are four other examples from my own files.

American Willowherb, first recorded in 1958 and now everywhere, including my own garden.

Butterfly Bush has spread rapidly since the 1960s. Butterfly Bush may seem benign but like many other introduced species there is a dark side. First of all, as Tony O’Mahony points out in his Wildflowers of Cork City and County, it’s quite invasive and can take over and crowd out native species. The roots can do significant structural damage to the very walls it depends on for survival. More serious is the charge that, while it provides nectar for butterflies it is not a butterfly host plant – that is, one that butterflies can use to deposit their larva, which will then feed on the leaves. According to a spokesperson concerned about the destruction of chalk grasslands at Folkestone Warren in Kent: If left uncontrolled, then buddleia and other shrubs would have engulfed the chalk grassland. Clouds of butterflies used to be seen there, but now only common species can be spotted and even these are in decline, with the rarest ones disappearing altogether. Buddleia was eliminating butterfly habitat by killing off everything else, and while the shrub provided food for adults and larger insects, other plants were needed for butterflies in their larval stages.

Himalayan Balsam, a beautiful but highly invasive species that can colonise waterways, choking out our native flowers.

Variegated Yellow Archangel – only here since the 70s, it can carpet woods in the spring, crowding out our native woodland species.

Examples are also given of plants that have decreased, and indeed most of these I have never seen, such as Agrimony, Corn Mint, Field Gentian, Heath Cudweed and Mugwort. Two that I have been fortunate to observe and photograph before they get even rarer are Corn Marigold and Marsh Lousewort.

Corn Marigold – just as it is supposed to grow, on the edges of arable fields. It is hanging on in West Cork here and there and it’s always a treat to see it.

Marsh Lousewort – I have only found this once, in the Derreennatra Bog I wrote about in my post “The Wildest and Richest Gardens” – West Cork Bog Soaks

A section of the report looks at Habitat Loss and another at Climate Change and its effects on our wild flora. Reading about the loss of species-rich native Grasslands is particularly sobering. 

It may seem ironic that grassland should be threatened in Ireland, but it is the loss of certain types of grassland – those on less fertile soils and rich in wild species – that is the issue. These ‘semi-natural’ grasslands supported a large number of our characteristic native species, including many orchids. They were maintained by extensive grazing, or by the cutting of hay in mid to late summer. Converting these habitats rich in species into more intensively managed grassland, or in some cases abandonment to scrub, has led to the loss of many species that could not compete in the altered environment. The underlying reason for the decline of many grassland plants lies in their response to nutrient concentrations, such as soil nitrogen levels and nitrogen deposition from the atmosphere. For the most part, native grassland species require low levels of fertility; they cannot compete successfully at higher levels. It may at first seem counterintuitive that high fertility levels could be inimical to plant diversity, but there is now a very large body of evidence pointing in this direction. We can conclude that grassland plants generally are in trouble, with the exception of those few species that thrive in highly fertile conditions.

Even in West Cork, our fields are becoming larger and hedgerows are disappearing. Wetlands, woodlands and ‘Arable land and other disturbed habitats’ are also dealt with. The report notes that while the volume of ‘weeds’ in agricultural lands has reduced, what is mostly missing are the native plants, while the variety has increased with the advent of new species. The Common Poppy, for example, might be making a comeback since it is often included in wildflower mixes. I saw the ones below in a field in Wicklow.

The report concludes with some highly charged questions.

A botanical visitor to the present day from the 1950s would see vast changes in Ireland. Changes in the landscape would stand out, with large swathes of dark conifer forest in the uplands having replaced areas of blanket bog and hill pastures. There would be larger, more uniformly deep-green fields in the lowlands, less length of hedge, more fence, and many fewer areas of marsh and bogland. Roads would be larger and straighter with verges that were mown by machine once or twice a year rather than grazed or cut spasmodically by hand. There would be fewer small potato patches, and arable crops would be less widespread and more concentrated in favourable areas.

Looking more closely, they would see that the mature conifer plantations consisted mainly of one species, Sitka Spruce, in huge numbers of even-aged stands, and had very few plants growing within them. The green fields of the lowlands would have a few plants of familiar common species like Dandelions, Docks and Chickweed along with the ubiquitous Ryegrass, but the diverse flower-rich meadows would have disappeared. Road verges would be dominated by rank growth of grasses. Pockets of wetland would be far fewer except in the West. All these changes and many more have been documented, implicitly or explicitly, by the findings of Plant Atlas 2020 and comparisons with those of its predecessors.

Our visitor might raise a flurry of questions. Have scientists been looking the other way? Why were the best habitats not protected? Who should have prevented the pollution of water bodies by nutrients? How did the idea of planting vast uniform stands of one alien conifer on deep peat take root Whose job should it have been to develop a long-term vision for Irish land-use? Were the consequences of moving towards energy-intensive farming systems foreseeable?

These are questions closer to the realm of politics than of science. Plant Atlas 2020 itself cannot answer them, but the information within it provides an enormous wealth of data about the distributions of Irish plants and how they have changed.

Sea Kale, above, is a rare plant that seems to be more abundant now that it was 20 years ago. As the report points out, there are a few examples like this that may relate to how records are collected rather than the absolute abundance/rarity of the plant, and the report tries to provide a model that corrects for this.

Finally, there are a set of recommendations based on protecting and restoring habitats, and the last is this one:

Repair the cultural standing of plants. As generations of people become more distant from their origins on the land, they tend to overlook the vital roles of plants. Their place in formal education has dwindled, and most people can name very few of them. By omission, plants are misunderstood, downplayed, ignored, and dismissed, even though we still need them as much as ever. Plants require more of our attention and it is in our interest to give it to them.

So what can we- you and I – do about this? Here are my own actions – they are simple and doable by anyone.

First, I have educated myself about wildflowers. Buy a copy of Zoe Devlin’s Wildflowers of Ireland and take it with you as you walk (that’s Zoe, above, with a group of us hanging on her every word). Or take your phone and use her website or one of the new plant ID APPs. People swear by their own, but I have to say I have found the Picture This app to be reliable and easy to use.

Second, I have tried to spread the good word. I do this using this blog – see the Flora and Fauna of West Cork Page for many many posts on our wildflowers – including lots of slideshows for pure enjoyment. The one above, Wandering the Boreens, is one of my favourites and shows what can be seen along a typical West Cork road in summer. I have also developed a Wildflowers Brochure for use along the the Fastnet Trails, and occasionally lead wildflower walks (below) and give talks. Perhaps most importantly, I am now using my Instagram page for short (I aim for 30 seconds or less) videos on individual wildflowers. I’ll be starting that up again soon for 2023.

Third, I have set aside part of my own One Acre as a wildflower meadow. How I have done this is all laid out in my Rewilding My One Acre Posts and it has taken very little work on my part. If you have a garden or any bit of land around your residence, do consider whether you can do this too. The Pollinators will be very grateful.

Finally, I try to mow as little as possible and I have changed my mindset about ‘weeds’ and such concepts as ‘curb appeal’ and ‘tidiness.’ True gardeners would be horrified, but the insects don’t seem to mind. A tiny rare plant, Sharp-leaved Fluellen (below), showed up on my driveway, who knows how – but if the ‘weeds’ had been eliminated, I would never have found it.

PLEASE read the report, and see what you can do to protect our precious biodiversity.

The Storied Way to Beara

You know we love the beauty of West Cork, and we can’t resist the odd foray into all our neighbouring parishes. They are perhaps a bit wilder and higher, with markedly remote open spaces. So here’s a little wander on to the Beara Peninsula and beyond: I have raided our archive of photographs to enthuse us – and, hopefully you – to travel those roads in the coming spring. Firstly, have a look at this:

There’s a house down there, nestled under some spectacularly steep fields! This is to remind you that you have to up the scale a bit if you are stepping across the county boundaries. This Kerry landscape is such a contrast to our own seascapes and islands. We have our hills, of course: Mount Gabriel was in the news this week because of the gorse fires which lit up its summit. Such fires are allowed up until the first of March – by longstanding tradition – to clear the land and improve the grazing. It all seems a bit incongruous, though, when governments are planning to outlaw wood-burning stoves because they lead to poor air quality, and we are being advised by the HSE about the adverse health effects of air polluted by smoke and ash. Fire on Mount Gabriel 26 February 2023 – photo by Magnus Burbanks – courtesy Southern Star:

Let’s leave that argument – and the drama – for others to debate, and return to the colour and spectacle of our neighbours. Below are fishing boats tied up in Castletown-Berehaven. You’ll note that ‘Iolair’ is registered in Skibbereen. If this seems strange, remember that our West Cork town on the Ilen River is still the Port Of Registration for all shipping on the south-west coast of Ireland between the jurisdictions of Cork and Limerick. My recent post on the Ilen described Skibbereen as “. . . a settlement served by water . . .” with perhaps up to nine historic quays and a Custom House located within the town in its heyday of commercial vessels working on the river. Present day Shipping registrations are administered by Customs & Excise in Bantry, even though the prefix ‘S’ (for Skibbereen) is still used – a somewhat quirky anomaly: the Custom House in Skibbereen was closed in 1890!

The people of the Beara Peninsula quite likely think of themselves foremost as an entity, rather than a mixture of Corkonians and Kerry people. In Eyries a Seanchaí – or storyteller – is celebrated: Pádraig Ó Murchú. His story is a somewhat sad one, certainly not untypical of many remote areas in Ireland. He was born in Gort Broc (Gortbrack, Co Kerry – north of Kenmare Bay) on 15 February 1873. His parents were Seán Ó Murchú whose wife Máire Harrington. (‘Caobach’) and he had four sisters and two brothers. Five of them, the boys and three of the girls, went to Butte, Montana. Seán died in Gort Broc at the age of 47 when Pádraig himself was a young boy. None of his forebears ever returned home but he would receive a letter every now and then from one of his aunts. Folklorist Martin Verling states that 707 men and 431 women emigrated to Butte from the parish of Aorí between 1870 and 1915. An account of how his great-grandfather, Seán Ó Murchú, settled in Kerry was taken down from Pádraig’s mouth (or Patsy as he was called): Seán was abducted by one of the ‘Cithearnaigh’ (a name given to certain Irish landlords in Beara) in Kerry and sold in France as a slave. When he managed to escape, he landed in Beara.

Commemorating Pádraig Ó Murchú in Eyries

Measles affected Pádraig’s eyesight so badly that he was given a blind pension; ‘flickering’ left him unable to read or write. He spoke English fluently, with Irish his native tongue. Until she died in 1923 his mother lived with him, and it fell to him to tend to her during the decline of old age. He earned his living by farming and fishing and was always in good health, apart from his eyesight. Writer and folklorist Máirtín Verling recorded memories of him from men who were young boys during Pádraig’s old age. Pádraig was part of a culture now vanished, and Verling states “. . . the day Pádraig Ó Murchú was lost as an old man – the habit of storytelling, and the habit of speaking Irish, died together in Béarra . . .”

Map of the Beara Peninsula from the Royal Society of Antiquities of Ireland, T J Westropp 1919. Principal archaeological sites are indicated.

These Beara landscapes are typical of the remote grandeur of the territory. Human settlement has encroached upon it – the patchy forestry plantations above are unnatural and uninspiring – but there are sufficient wild prospects remaining to ensure that the all-embracing beauty can never be eroded. Plenty of living history remains in evidence.

Archaeology, colour and community are all part of the local scenes on the Beara. The tourism industry is undoubtedly thriving, bringing fresh life with it.

We hope you will agree that the Beara – whether it’s Cork or Kerry – is deserving of a visit – and a stay: you have to delve deeply into the lifestyle and traditions. Enjoy!

(Above – the work of stained glass artist George Walsh. A visit to the little church in Eyries to take in more of this is a must)

West Cork in Photographs 2022

A personal selection of photographs, taken in West Cork in 2022, by Robert and Finola.

Looking forward to sharing many more adventures with you in 2023.

Fionnán: an Autumn Walk

All across West Cork, at higher elevations, autumn heralds the emergence of vast carpets of amber grass. Shading from yellow to red and everything in between, it is the distinctive colour of the uplands. We call it Fionnán (pronounced fyuh-nawn).

Fionnán is a particularly apt name because the root, fionn, means blonde, but fionnadh can mean shaggy animal hair. In English, this is the far less romantic and puzzling Purple Moor Grass. Actually, when it’s young, the first spikes can have a purplish hue, but that colour certainly does not spring to mind in the autumn. In Latin, it’s Molinia caerulea – Molinea after the man who named it, a Chilean naturalist, and caerulea meaning blue. Right – that’s more than you wanted to know about the name.

A Fionnán and Rush pasture is a recognised and important habitat, and should be rich in wildflowers, sedges, and other grasses. But it’s a delicate balance that can be upset by a number of factors – too much or too little drainage, under- or over-grazing, grazing by the wrong animals, and too-frequent burning.

Burning and over-grazing by sheep have affected many of our Fionnán pastures in West Cork. Repeat burning (often done in the belief that it improves grazing and gets rid of gorse) in particular allows the Fionnán and bracken to take over at the expense of other species and in the end degrades the soil.

Birdwatch Ireland says that the answer is sustainable grazing levels to keep certain bog grasses in check, such as Purple Moor Grass (Molinia caerulea). Too little grazing and the grasses can become rank, smothering the important bog mosses, heathers and sedges. This reduces the species diversity and the ability to be an active, peat-forming bog.

On our walk this week it was difficult to assess the health of this particular pasture, since nothing much is still blooming. However, I have walked it before and am happy to report that I have noted many of the species that are indicators of a healthy moor-grass pasture – Meadow Thistle, Heath spotted-orchid,  Lousewort, and Cross-leaved Heath. 

To walk in a Fionnán pasture is a deeply pleasurable experience. There is something about being surrounded by waving expanses of golden grasses – perhaps Sting’s Fields of Gold was influenced by such an experience. The weather has been very variable but we did manage to catch some sun, and evade the inevitable downpour by getting back to the car in the nick of time.

As I said, not a lot was still in bloom – except the gorse because, you know, when gorse is out of blossom, kissing’s out of fashion. But there is still lots to see and sense. Chamomile grows abundantly along the track and its heady scent drifts upwards as you tramp over it. 

Old fence posts still hang on, with their rusted barbed wire still attached, along with lichens. I was especially delighted to see Devil’s Matchstick lichen on one of the old posts.

This track leads upwards to an intriguing cairn (another of the anomalous structures that I wrote about last week). There’s a memorial bench to a man who used to come here to commune with nature – and you can see why he would. Last time we were there, the bench needed repair but it’s now perfect again – thank you, anonymous fixer!

There are fabulous vistas from the top – on this occasion it afforded us a magnificent view of the squall that was heading our direction, over Mounts Corrin and Gabriel. It was our cue to dash back down again. 

The Politics of Peat

It’s a poignant juxtaposition, perhaps: the old turf road that leads into the peat cuttings at Letterlickey, here in West Cork, with – beyond – our newest energy technology lining the distant hills. On October 31st this year, the sale of turf, smoky coal, and wet wood in shops or online was banned in Ireland as part of the drive to improve our climate.

The move marks the loss of an ancient tradition in Ireland. ‘Turf’ – or peat – has been harvested from our bogs for countless generations. But it’s a resource that can’t be readily renewed. It’s also relatively inefficient: the gruelling labour required to cut, dry, store and transport turf on a domestic scale is hardly justified by the output of heat which it provides. However, such work has been deeply ingrained in family life for centuries by those who have always accessed the bogs. The word ‘bog’ derives from the Irish bógach, or “soft place,” and 17 percent of Ireland’s 27,000-square-mile national territory was originally covered in peatland. Commercial extraction, however, has significantly diminished this resource. What has been realised – in comparatively recent times – is that peatlands, including bogs, store twice as much carbon as all the world’s forests – if left intact.

The turf workings at Letterlickey: the significant and ancient bog there has been in use in very recent times – perhaps it still is active. The new ban doesn’t prevent families who have always had turf-cutting rights from continuing to gather it for their own use. But all commercial peat extraction has now ended. It’s a sobering thought that electricity was generated by peat-fired power stations in Ireland for many years: ‘peat power’ peaked in the 1960s, providing 40% of Ireland’s electricity. But burning peat for electricity emits more carbon dioxide than coal, and nearly twice as much as natural gas. In 2016, peat generated nearly 8% of Ireland’s electricity, but was responsible for 20% of that sector’s carbon emissions. Today all of the peat-fired powers stations here have been closed. The West Offaly power station at Shannonbridge (below) was the largest in Ireland: it shut down in December 2020.

We are witnessing the end of an era here in Ireland. At the same time we are embracing the search for new technologies: we are harnessing the wind – that will never stop blowing! PV cells are now commonplace, and we know that it’s likely we will mostly be driving electric cars as the decade advances. Other ways forward are still waiting in the wings. We were interested to see – when we were walking the Letterlickey turf road yesterday – that the trackway has been deliberately blocked by large boulders:

These blockages have been put in place since we last visited – and, probably, fairly recently. There could be local access issues: we don’t know. It could be to do with neighbours or trespassing, but it’s also possible that current political preoccupations are being practically addressed. It’s certainly interesting that significant moves are under way since the importance of peat bog preservation as carbon sinks has been fully understood. ‘Bringing home the turf’ will soon become a solely historical concept. The image below is by Tomás Ó Muircheartaigh:

“. . . Ireland has more than half the European Union’s remaining area of a type of peatland known as raised bog, one of the world’s rarest habitats and, scientists say, the most effective land form on earth for sequestering carbon . . .”

New York Times 04/10/2022

Ten Years!

Why have we chosen this photograph to head up our ten year anniversary blogpost? That’s simple: the pic was taken on 15 October 2012. We had moved into Ard Glas – just outside Ballydehob – for a six-month rental to see how we liked West Cork!

But – what about the giant sparrow?

Wait a minute. We very obviously ended up liking West Cork so much that we bought a house in Cappaghglass (the townland next door to Ard Glas), and have stayed there ever since. As you can see, we have been thoroughly enjoying ourselves over the last decade:

Yes, but, that very large sparrow…?

Be patient! Believe it or not, we have kept the blog posts going, with hardly any interruption, ever since. This is Roaringwater Journal post number 968. In the last decade, our Journal has been viewed over 1.5 million times and we have acquired over 5,700 followers between our various platforms.

Our posts are all still there in the archives – and you can still read them. Search by using the three-bar icon on the home page and select All Pages-Navigation, or one of the other menus. Alternately, press the cog button under the Roaringwater Journal title at the top of the page, then scroll down to Archives. Roll down through all the months. Or enter a search term into the magnifying glass symbol next to the cog. That will show whether we have mentioned your chosen subject in any of our blogs. We warn you that some posts (especially the very early ones) haven’t survived the test of time perfectly: but we leave them in there because it’s all a bit of history.

Sparrow?

Hang on! Of course, things change a bit as the years go by (although we don’t*). We have varied the layout of the blog, and the header etc. We had thought of refreshing it all again to celebrate this milestone but… ah, well – perhaps for the twentieth anniversary.

Sp……..?

Another pic from 2012 (above) showing mixed weather conditions over Roaringwater Bay. It hasn’t always been sunshine here (have a look at this) but it always feels sunny to us – or just about to be sunny. One of our newest posts -here – shows us doing what we like the most, and always have: exploring remote and often forgotten West Cork byways.

Our regular readers will know that, over ten years, we have developed our interests to take in history, archaeology, rock art, stained glass, architecture, topography, folklore, wildflowers, art and culture, landscape and language… and very much more. We share our adventures often with Amanda and Peter Clarke, our fellow bloggers and friends – see Holy Wells of Cork and Kerry and Hikelines.

What of the next ten years? Well, we are trying to be innovative. This week we have introduced a ‘guest post’ for the first time: this one, by our friend Brian O’Riordan, explores the exploits of an intrepid 79-year old woman who sailed solo across the Atlantic to Ireland in 1994 , which falls right into our own interests, and – hopefully – yours too.

S…………..?

Ok – we have got the message! About the sparrow, that is. The original giant sparrow is one of two (a male and a female) which were created for the Olympic Park in Vancouver, Canada, in 2010 by the sculptor Myfanwy MacLeod. One was transported by our own photo magic to Ard Glas! Perhaps they are not relevant to West Cork, but they are meaningful to Finola and Robert, as we saw them together in Canada ten years ago – pic below. We have just recently returned from a visit to Canada, enjoying a long-awaited catch-up with Finola’s family there. We made sure to record our presence there with another photo-op (below the below).

* Hopefully this demonstrates how youthful we remain, imbibing as we do the stimulating West Cork air. Here’s to the next ten….!