Extinct flowers in bloom by the roadside

THE other day I was driving slowly along a small country road when something caught my eye. There were large, bright yellow flowers growing in the verge that looked unfamiliar.

I wasn’t in a hurry so I parked and walked back for a closer look. My hunch was right. This was something exciting. Corn marigold is such a rare plant in Ireland that the last time I’d found it was at least 20 years ago. There it was, growing in a road verge in Co Kildare. And on the other side of the hedge was a large cereal field, in stubble. This was just the right habitat. Corn marigold was probably accidentally introduced to Ireland by Neolithic farmers 5,000 or 6,000 or years’ ago and we know from pollen records and archaeological excavations that it was a common weed in cereal crops up until the 20th century.

It’s a spectacular wild flower, but it’s unpopular with farmers and it declined rapidly with the introduction of modern weed-killers and with more efficient methods of separating weed seeds from seed grain. It would probably have become extinct, but it’s believed to have developed an immunity to some of the most frequently used herbicides.