Out for Orchids

Our native orchids are among the most beautiful, interesting and appealing of our wildflowers and I have had three very enjoyable outings to see them recently. The Lesser Twayblade had frustrated me for several years. I knew from friends that there was a small population in a remote area in Co. Wicklow – I had …

She is an Academic Bee.

She came late to education but has certainly made an impact now that she is here. Already, she has been feted in local press and on the national airwaves with a special appearance on the main evening news. We cannot begrudge her these moments in the limelight for, truth be told, she is at present …

Standing at the Gate

Janus, that ancient Roman god, was two-faced! He was a god of beginnings and endings, of looking to the future and to the past, a god of gates and doorways, of passage and transition and he gave his name to this month, January. Perhaps, to call Janus two-faced (insincere and deceitful) is not being fair …

A Good Orchid Day

The journey from home to Gortlecka Crossroads, in the heart of The Burren in Co. Clare, takes two hours and forty minutes according to the directions from Google maps and to drive there and back in one day would be a hard day indeed. The offer of travelling part of the way and taking a …

There will be days like this!

It was a scorcher of a Sunday, with temperatures in the high 20s, and after a two hour drive we had a thirty-minute walk up a hillside in the Glen of Aherlow, Co. Tipperary, in search of the very rare Small White Orchid. There are scarce records of sightings in north Co. Tipperary and there …

The Orchid Hunter

This is book bursting at the binding with enthusiasm and an almost obsessive love of our native orchids. Leif Bersweden, a precocious botanist who fell in love with native wildflowers as a child, was unsuccessful in his initial application for a place at Oxford University and decided to use his gap year to track down …

The Fools’ Outing

There is available to us all the most wonderful nature reserve and wildflower preservation area and these are on the verges of our national road network. Many of these roads have wide verge and some have wonderfully steep banks. These latter are especially excellent as their slope makes grass cutting too awkward  and wildflowers are …

Oh, Please, let me be Undisturbed and Unimproved!

It a treat to come on a spot of land where conditions have dictated that nature rather than the work of man will hold sway and then to enjoy the wild flowers which have benefitted from this chance happening, especially those which would otherwise not have survived. The Green-Veined Orchid, Anacamptis morio The Green-Veined Orchid, …