The fascination with forests still exists in Ireland. Stories about the properties of wood are tied fast into
riddles, ancient language, legends and even brace the Brehon Laws with meaning.
Once upon a time the Island was greened with forests, these temperate rainforests. The Irish rainforests
are connected with the cloud rainforests of South America by one extraordinary green link that I found as
a young student of botany. I remember the day. It was late spring in Killarney. A massive boulder
leaning against a tree caught my eye. This ice age monster wore a green skirt of the finest fabric, the
fragile one-cell thick fronds of the fern, Hymenophyllum. This rare treasure I brought back to Cork
University and put it under a microscope and classified it. It is now known as the Killarney fern.
The ancient forests of Ireland were composed of a unique mixture of tree species. A few evergreens
coexisted with many spectacular deciduous trees. These covered the valleys but covered the tops of the
mountains, too. They were able to exist there by means of the constant warm rain and weathering of rock
systems that provided an almost endless sandy terrain filled with mobile nutrients.
Some ancient forests were of yew, more of oak. The remains of these I witnessed for myself being dragged
out of turf bogs and cut with saws after they had dried in the sun. These black skeletons of trees were
never super large, such as are witnessed elsewhere on the planet, but seemed to grow in a squat fashion,
close to the ground as if the many gales and tempests off the Atlantic Ocean drove them back.
Native Irish evergreens were, and still are, the lordly Scots Pine, Pinus sylvestris; the sulky Irish Yew,
Taxus baccata, and the shining holly, Ilex aquifolium.
The principal deciduous tree of the past was the oak, of course. Irish woods flaunted this oak, Quercus
rebur, right down to a few paces from the sea and begot form this courageous stance against the stress of
the elements another sister tree, the sessile oak, Quercus petrea. This oak bears sessile fruit which means
that the acorn stem is extremely short and is sometimes non-existent. The oak leaves of this tree are
different, too. The petiole is long and extends into a midrib which carries a curious batch of glandular
hairs that science has not yet bothered to examine.
Other deciduous trees are the aspen, Populus tremula, the alder, Alnus glutinosa, the ash, Fraxinus
excelsior, the birch, Betula pubescens, the rowan, Sorbus ancuparia, and the willow, Salix alba. The
smaller deciduous trees are the feeding trees for wildlife, migratory birds and butterflies. These are the
apple, Malus sylvestris, the cobnut or hazel, Corylus avellana, and the hawthorn, Prunus spinosa. The
elder, Sambucus nigra, is till part of the wildwood scene as it once was all over the world.
The aspect of the ancient woodland of Ireland must have been extraordinary. A glimpse of this can be
garnered from the tiny fragments left standing. And this is just a little more than 1% of the landscape. A
piece so small that less than a few citizens have had the experience of it to treasure.
Ancient Irish oaks produced elbows in the woodland. The branches grew stout and long with age.
These did not reach so much for light as for support. This support came from the ground itself as the branches crawled along the open soil to lift up their individual canopies to the sky again. This clever technique of extreme old age is a form of propagation of the ancient genome itself when the trunk of the tree decreases in height. This shrinkage produces a ‘sweat’ of black, medicinal tannins which help the age
old process of nitrogen composting. In time and this time is measured in the flick of centuries, one tree produces many. And so an ancient tree clones itself into the future.
The tapestry of the Irish woodlands did not end there. It was picked up by the lichen populations. This natural wonder of algae and fungi living a life together injected the trees with a host of healthy natural antibiotics. We will never know what Ireland held in this treasure trove, but some foliose lichens can still be found on ancient trees and more than a share of crustose forms, too. The ferns share the same strange habitat as in the tropics, out to the ends of the branches and hanging from the limbs. They make acompost soil which they share with the aerial mosses. The ivy stems on these trees are like tendons on a sinewy arm, spitting up a mainstem from the soil at the base of the trunk that can live for 500 years if left to its own devices.
But Ireland has turned her back on the past. The native woodland is replaced by sterile deserts:
plantation forests borrowed from the west coast of Canada. These trees are called Tideland
spruce or Sitka spruce, Picea sitchensis. In their own habitat they are 160 foot wonders and brush the
mountains with the sea. Their host of pimaric acids are diluted by the Pacific. This does not happen in
the small closed lakes and streams of fresh water systems of the Irish landscape, where wild salmon use to
run.
The Woodland League is replanting the native Irish Forests. They are doing it one acorn at a time, one
sloe at a time and one ash samara. The method of over-wintering, dormancy and imbibition of the seeds
is known as the Dunemann method. Herr Dunemann was a German forester who brought about the
successful natural planting of some of Germany’s valuable native forests.
The acorns and various seeds are packed in their own litter of leaves during the winter months. This
natural means of seed coat protection ensures that the seeds will expand and germinate at the correct time
the following spring or maybe even, the spring after that. The seedlings are healthy and remain so after
they are planted.
The Dunemann method is elegance itself in its scientific simplicity. All trees produce hormones. The
chemical range of these hormones is large. Some are produced during the full life span of the tree, these
are called auxins. Others are produced only in the autumn at leaf fall. These are mostly gibberellins and
are composed of sixty or so very important hormones. One hormone comes down with the nut and the
seed. This is abscisic acid. This hormone regulates seed maturation and germination as well as directing
the tiny seeds’ response to stress. Herr Dunemann and others, unfortunately, did not understand the
science at the time, but had the right instinct for nature’s ways in any case.
Now with the help of the Woodland League, Ireland can find a new fashion on greenery. The science
and forward thinking can lead the way for other countries to follow. Trees have been trading in carbon
for millennia and native trees in natural habitats do it better than any brainwave of man; a greater plan has
been sitting in the leaf waiting for the human family to wake up!
©D. Beresford-Kroeger 2010
