Colm O'Regan: A tour of the botanical gardens made me all emotional

Comedian and Irish Examiner columnist Colm O'Regan pictured in Cork. Picture: Denis Minihane.

Surprising bits of knowledge from primary school that stuck for some reason: Minotaurs, labyrinths, and lengths of string; Grace Darling rowing from a lighthouse; Art O’Neill limping through the snow in Wicklow, escaping from perfidious English and their Irish lackeys; Helen Keller (we called her Kelliher, obviously) and Anne Sullivan. They all pop up and your new brain’s processor, not slowed by too much software (busy) or a virus (worry), stores them and never forgets.

And sequoias. The giant Californian redwoods. Somewhere (Ladybird/Look and Learn/Sonas) you saw an illustration of a car driving through one.

I saw a Californian Redwood again last week. There wasn’t a car through it. It was in the National Botanic Gardens and we were on a guided tour of what some of the garden’s plants do in winter. (They adapt, they’re not gone skiing). 

First of all, it cannot be understated how amazing plants are, once you stop and look. I mean, obviously I was aware of that already, but when someone is guiding you around a frosty botanic garden, pointing out stuff, it sticks more than glancing at an encyclopaedia. Has anyone ever guided you through a bit of nature and showed you the small stuff? There was a tree there from Chile that had an extra-cold bark, because water runs down the inside of it. I’d walked past it before, but never given it a little pat. Its leaves were scented all spicy, grapefruity. In the greenhouse there’s the Mauritian plant that grows near waterfalls, which has red nectar (not a craft beer) that is designed to attract lizards. This hooked me: Right from the gecko.

The guide was fierce excited about snowdrops and their sharp little leaves for poking up through frost and the way their flowers hang low against cold rain, so that water doesn’t puddle inside and form damaging ice. And mistletoe. How many times have I said the word, but never looked at one properly? It has a sticky goo, so that it gets stuck on birds’ beaks and they then bring it to another tree to pollinate there.

Quite how that became a romantic symbol, I’ll never understand. And, anxious to get in on the act, as we were passing, two seagulls were stamping on the ground like Irish men dancing at a wedding.

They were tricking worms into believing the thumps of their feet were rain that would make them come up. This was at midday, so they were not early birds. Work smarter not harder. Their airport book is out soon.

Of course, when you find out neat things, you find out sad things. One of the redwoods there is dead. They’ve cut all the branches off for safety and left the trunk there, so it soars into the sky like The Spire, if it was built in Molly Malone’s time. The tree died, in part because there weren’t any other redwoods around it. Some tree species like to grow with others of their ilk, as their root systems sort of work together. So the tree died because it was all alone. Sorry, it’s just got very dusty in here, all of a sudden.

Speaking of emotions, a guided tour of a garden is mixture of feelings. Awe at what plants can do and the dawning realisation that, with every step, you realise you know sweet FA about anything. (There was no Sweet FA blooming yet. It doesn’t appear till April)

But after a little tour, I know now that, sometimes, a little knowledge is not a dangerous thing.

• The botanic gardens are doing winter tours for a fiver till the end of January. (botanicgardens.ie).
• Colm is doing a spring tour though less plant-based. (colmoregan.com)