How flowers found their way to Ireland from the Yangtze

ANOTHER LIFE:IN THE MIDST of the tangled thicket of shrub roses (their French names and langorous scents my one gesture to posh gardening) tall wands of Rosa moyesii, from China, some of them close on four metres long, flailed about in the summer storm. Their simple blossoms of fiery red (like armistice poppies, but with a boss of golden stamens) hung on bravely, their survivors charred and shrivelling in the salty blast from the sea.

Such a cultivated "species" rose, as distinct from all the hybrids, is as near as a gardener gets to a wild original. R moyesiiblooms abundantly at woodland edges in the western foothills of Tibet – or did, at least, in the days of the great European plant hunters. They were led by the Irish-born Augustine Henry, whose life and adventures are now celebrated in a sumptuously heavyweight, picture-rich tome, In the Footsteps of Augustine Henry(Garden Art Press, €46). Written by Seamus O'Brien, the Sinophile specialist of the National Botanic Gardens, it will be launched there on June 13th by Thomas Pakenham.

My storm-tossed rose was not, as it happens, among the more than 1,700 species of plant discovered by Henry, nor among the 158,000 pressed specimens he sent off to Kew Gardens, in England. But it was found first by a colleague he helped and advised (Antwerp Pratt in 1894: the moyesiiwas a courtesy to a hospitable missionary) in the golden age of plant exploration Henry pioneered in China.

He spent more than 30 years away from Ireland, many as a colonial customs official on the River Yangtze. The dutiful inspection of medicinal herbs from the interior, many of them deeply mysterious, sowed his botanical curiosity and his first contacts with the experts at Kew. They encouraged his first expeditions upriver, with sedan chair and a score of native coolies and collectors, and eventually sent out a botanist – the famous EH “Chinese” Wilson – to collaborate with Henry and follow in his footsteps.

As with Kew, our National Botanic Gardens have grown many of the finest specimens of plants discovered by Henry and Wilson and later brought into garden cultivation. Henry returned to Ireland in 1913 after further travels in North America to study trees. His advice guided the planting of Sitka spruce on bogs and “useless” land (“no forestry without a profit” was his maxim), and he became the first professor of forestry at University College Dublin.

Henry’s own garden in Ranelagh (next to Helen Dillon’s, as it happens) became a flourishing showpiece of Chinese plants with henryi as their second name. When he died, in 1930, his diaries, notebooks and hand-drawn maps were bequeathed to the National Botanic Gardens, in Glasnevin. Many dated from his explorations of the Three Gorges region of China, and when, in the 1990s, news came of construction of the great Yangtze dam, the Glasnevin botanists planned the first of two expeditions to retrace Henry’s explorations.

The Irish team, led by Seamus O’Brien, arrived just in time, in 2002, with the dam under way, and huge numbers of people moving to new cities on higher ground. In the spectacular river gorges and their glens, now flooded behind the dam, the team travelled with the blessing of China’s own botanists, and the seeds they brought home have yielded thousands of new plants for Glasnevin and other Irish gardens. O’Brien’s book, so densely sown with botanical names, is also a lushly beautiful gallery of the plants Henry and his colleagues sent out to the western world.

It appears, appropriately enough, amid the tercentenary celebrations of the department of botany at Trinity College Dublin. Its work began, 17 professors ago, with Henry Nicholson’s first lecture on medicinal plants to medical students in 1711 (go to tcd.ie/botany/tercentenary for the history), and the origins of botany in early herbal medicine and chemistry have prompted the college to re-create a small “physic” garden, opened this spring beside the Science Gallery.

To reach it is to walk through Trinity's magnificent collection of trees, a stroll to enrich any city worker's lunchtime, and a free and fascinating guide to the plants of the physic garden by Hazel Proctor is matched by a new booklet, Trees of Trinity College Dublin, edited by Daniel Kelly and David Jeffrey, and available for €5 in the college bookshop.

Its 52 selected trees are superbly photographed in their seasonal prime: a revelation of what will grow and mature in the city centre. Many are from China and Japan, among them the "living fossil" maidenhair tree, Ginkgo biloba, and the dawn redwood, Metasequoia glyptostroboides, discovered in central China only in 1941. As for the Japanese cherry, Prunus'Shogetsu', the booklet waxes ecstatic: "To gaze up into the canopy of this tree in full bloom is to feel oneself transported." That was in April, so you've missed it – but do try the other 51.

Eye on nature

A pair of foxes are rearing three cubs about 500yd from our farmyard. I watched one of them chase a stray cat and pounce on him a few yards from the yard. The cat managed to jump free, but the fox saw me and ran away.

John Pierce, Broadford, Co Limerick

I saw a baby stoat for the first time on a trail in Cratloe Wood, in Co Clare. I’ve seen pine-marten kittens a few times near the same spot. Recently a female hen harrier spent some days hovering over the trees here. Most years a pair come for a while. And the cuckoo is calling!

Pádraic Breathnach, Limerick

The great tit returned again this year to nest in the letterbox. Eggs have hatched and they are gone. Could it be the same hen returning year after year?

Redmond Burke, Clonmel, Co Tipperary

Great tits are known to reach nine years, but most die before they are five. And, yes, it is probably the same bird.

I have noticed this year an increase in dead bumble bees on the lawn, and I’ve just found four together on paving.

Neil Brennan, Shanakiel, Cork

Bumble bees can suffer mite infestation. But workers die after about two weeks from overwork, particularly in fine weather.

Michael Viney welcomes observations at Thallabawn, Carrowniskey PO, Westport, Co Mayo, or viney@anu.ie. Please include a postal address