A world beyond our world

Where to begin?

At this time of the year, nature provides themes at every turn. Bluebells fill the woods, especially dramatic when the sun strikes them through gaps in the canopy. The beeches above them are just as lovely, with the sun filtered through the new leaves, still pastel green.

A Nature Trail has been created at Droumillihy Wood, on the road between Rosscarbery and Leap in west Cork, waymarked routes enhanced by the stands of bluebells among tall, slim beeches. The paths are freshly made and the going so easy that one might take one’s granny — but, of course, grannies are often fitter than their grandchildren these days. The woods are “lovely, dark and deep” as Robert Frost described his New England woods of a snowy evening. But Droumillihy, through which my wife and her sisters often walked from their home to the creamery at Cononagh as children, were filled with flowers, not with snow.

My local Courtmacsherry woods are, as always, worth travelling to visit. Here, the swathe of blue is interspersed with carpets of white, star-like ramsons contrasting vividly with the blue haze. This mix is a marker of ancient woodland.

I was, therefore, surprised to see ramsons thriving beside a stony, treeless path in The Burren in Co Clare last weekend. Botanically, they are called Allium ursum because brown bears apparently enjoy the bulbs and dig for them.

Walking past Aillwee Cave with the outline of a bear prominent in the gate lodge motif, I fancifully wondered if my ramsons might be a relict population surviving from prehistory. Bear bones were found in the cave but, while bears no longer roam the Burren, the ramsons still thrive.

It seems Mesolithic people shared a love of wild garlic and the leaves are still used in salads, soups and as boiled vegetables in some cuisines.

That evening, near Poulnabrone dolmen, I spotted a splash of blue on a limestone-flagged field and thought I’d come upon a crop of Spring Gentians, the emblematic Alpine flower of the Burren. Disappointingly, it turned out to be a lick of short-stemmed, densely pigmented bluebells — but their presence, again in a treeless landscape, confirmed the Burren as a site of botanical rarities. I saw many orchids, but only the most common of the 24 varieties present. There were cowslips, now rarely seen in west Cork, and rock roses. And we heard the cuckoo.

While wildflowers thrive in “unimproved” land, well-intentioned efforts at planting for “improvement” may not suit the landscape. I visited Inchydoney during the week and noticed that the promontory of Virgin Mary Point, in front of the hotel — so large that it makes the vast beaches appear as mere adjuncts — is in the process of being transformed into a municipal-type garden. In my opinion, the hotel and its huge car parks in front (not behind!) have already destroyed the grandeur of that once-wild coast. I remember the hotel as a child, a small human artefact perched on an unspoiled shore, dwarfed by nature’s majestic beaches with the Virgin Mary Point between them, a bastion of rock, thatched with scutch grass and marram, the habitat of banded snails. Whether one was buffeted by wild weather or flaked out among the dunes in the summer, at Inchydoney one could forget the town and experience a world beyond our world, its trite concerns and ephemeral values. It is unfortunate that a treasure of the nation, a showpiece of nature’s bounty owned by all, was thus traduced.

Now, of even greater importance is the erosion of the dunes. Expressing her concern, Deirdre Clenet, a Clonakilty-born biologist resident in Britain and a regular Inchydoney visitor, noted that the dunes toward Muckross Strand are reducing year by year. I agree. Like her, I roamed those sandhills as a child.

In an email, she suggests sound conservation measures: “New marram is being planted by a local group and UCC students, a move to be commended. This area should now be cordoned off. A Save Our Sand Dunes campaign should be mounted and explanatory signboards erected, perhaps funded by the hotel. A Sand Dune Restoration Fund should be set up, with boxes for public contributions, and lectures on sand dune ecology hosted by the hotel.”