Eye-opener book on Cork wildflowers

AFTER the dry weeks it’s suddenly the rainy season.

Between the showers the sun comes out and the breeze shakes the vegetation that surrounds the yard where lochs of water have collected on the paving slabs. The leaves shine, some with water droplets hanging at the tips, sparkling in the light. A butterfly, a red admiral, lands on the white courtyard walls and then flounces over the white sheets and towels hanging on the line. It isn’t winter yet. Last week, I was surprised to see a few Montbretia still in flower on a west Cork road, the orange flower bright against the hedgebank.

Hedgebank is a word I’ve learned from a botanical milestone of a book, Wildflowers of Cork City and County by Tony O’Mahony, published this month by The Collins Press. It is quite extraordinary in that it deals with the flora of almost every townland in the county. I can look up what flowers I am likely to see if I visit, for example, The Rochestown-Passage West Walkway in June (the curious, brownish-pink, stiffly erect spikes of Ivy Broomrape) or the northern flank of Knockowen mountain in July (Common and Large Flowered Butterwort, both ‘carnivorous’ plants, capturing insects on their sticky leaves) .