Damien Enright: What caused the fall of a mighty 110-year-old rhododendron tree?

For half its life, it was tall enough to catch - but withstand – the full force of the southwest gales that blew up the rising road from the sea

Said to have been sown in 1911, this rhododendron withstood all the skies could throw at it until now.

Emails from West Cork informed me of the devastation visited on my local woods by storms Dudley, Eunice and Franklin; this is the second or third time in half a dozen years when stands of waxy-leaved myrtles, with their red bark and fat, blackberries which in autumn provide feasts for blackbirds were laid low. They were a sad sight. It's no wonder aggressive winds are depicted in classical paintings as evil-looking, goateed men with horns and bearing tritons blasting their way through storm-blown clouds to wreak havoc on the farms and forests. What damage winds can do, brooking no obstacles in their path!

One of the casualties of 'our' village was a showpiece rhododendron standing thirty feet tall on a dog's-leg corner overlooking a pretty gate-lodge cottage at the entrance to an old estate. This was not Rhododendron ponticum, the invasive species that has rendered thousands of acres of Irish woodland impassable.