Tracing our faith in trees, taking stock of our trout

THE RITUAL ATMOSPHERICS of Christmas trees, holly and sprigs of imported mistletoe have little connection left with any pagan faith in surviving the winter, much as we could do with that just now. But last summer’s fancy of the Virgin Mary’s figure in a tree stump spoke for Ireland’s still-potent subculture of magical belief.

The Co Limerick illusion came too late for Trees of Inspiration: Sacred Trees & Bushes of Ireland(Collins Press, €24.95), but a photograph of Rathkeale's existing holy well, beneath an ash tree decked with rosaries and studded with coins, is one of scores of such local arboreal shrines entwined with elderly trunks and branches. They take their place with trees enduring as memorials of great events, mythical, military, social and political.

Christine Zuchelli studied Irish folklore in the archives at UCD (a national treasure) and has travelled the island to document sacred places and their narratives. Her book is painstakingly detailed and keen, tracing patterns of belief from the early Christian incorporation of pagan traditons to the unofficial observances, neo-Druidism and occasional Wicca rituals of today. Among photographs of trees decked with fresh and ageing rags, hung with plastic icons and bristling with (eventually toxic) coins are many beautiful arboreal studies, inspiring pleasure in trees just as they are.

Some traditional beliefs about Co Wicklow’s trees are rendered uncertain in If Trees Could Talk (coford.ie, €25), a history of the county’s woodlands and forestry over four centuries. Did Shillelagh’s oaks really supply the timber for the majestic ceiling of Westminster Hall? Was Irish timber felled to rebuild London after its Great Fire? Were vast amounts exported for Britain’s shipping? Michael Carey tests the rather scarce evidence. While barrel-staves and iron-works certainly made big inroads on the woods, colonial development, speculation and house building seem to have made the steadiest demands.

Dr Carey, a forestry consultant, has been fascinated with Wicklow’s trees since childhood holidays at Avondale, where his uncle was a forester. He traces the county’s original tree cover from pollen records and archaeology, describes the era of oak coppicing and felling, and then the planting and forestry that now makes Wicklow the leafiest county in Ireland.

A Douglas fir at Powerscourt, at almost 57 metres, is the tallest tree on the island, growing in just one of the big estates whose records and maps have been opened to the author. Most called-upon are those of the old Watson-Wentworth-Fitzwilliam estate based at Coolattin, near Shillelagh, and covering nearly 90,000 acres by 1876. Carey notes how the felling of old oaks in Coolattin’s Tomnafinoge Wood made it “a scene of controversy in the late 1980s” (it is now a nature reserve). But of the later “tree-hugger” protests in Glen of the Downs, nothing is said.

With maps, photographs and old paintings, this history celebrates trees chiefly with timber in mind.

Its publisher, Coford, is Ireland’s national forest research agency. The Central Fisheries Board is also a national research body, and Brown Trout in Ireland (cfb.ie/publications, €30) might well have turned out a solemn compendium of scientific papers. Scientifically sound it certainly is, but its authors – Dr Martin O’Grady, Myles Kelly and Shane O’Reilly – are keen trout anglers, and O’Reilly a skilled desktop publisher. Their production is both engaging to read and a pleasure to look at, with photographs of living, swimming fish that, as Prof Andy Ferguson says in his foreword, “set a new standard for fish illustration”.

Some revelatory pages also show trout caught in 30 different rivers and lakes, all with different colour patterns even within the same waters. Along with their genetic variation they have “an inbuilt dimmer switch” for rapid camouflage as they move betweenbackgrounds.

More than 30 years have passed since the last official research publication on the lives of Ireland’s brown trout – decades of busy research into their biology and ecology in a landscape and waterscape dramatically changed by farming, forestry and urban development and invaded by alien plants, invertebrates and fish. The new book brings the trout story up to date, not only for anglers and hatchery owners, but as an uncommon gem of popular natural history.

And two bedside Christmas books . . .

The Poetry of Birds(Viking Hardback, €28.99) is an anthology gathered by poet Simon Armitage and bird enthusiast Tim Dee.

Organised ornithologically, with notes on each species, the generous fistful of poets include Michael Longley, Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon and WB Yeats.

Wild Water, Wild Light(mikebrownphotography.com, €39.99) is the work of the west Cork photographer Mike Brown, a gifted recorder of landscape and wildlife. In this large-format hardback, he chooses superb moments along the coastline, his "wild light" sought often at the cusps of the day.

EYE ON NATURE

Every year we’ve always had hundreds of tadpoles in our 2.25 x 1.8 metre pond. Last year and this, newts returned after a long absence, but the tadpoles have disappeared. Have they eaten the frogspawn? I’d like to have both newts and tadpoles.

Dan Cowhie, Malahide, Co Dublin

Your pond is too small to accommodate both as the newts eat the tadpoles if there are not enough pond plants and space for them to hide.

Wasps were still around their nest on my shed in the second week of November due to the mild weather. In warmer countries do they live on until they wear out?

David Nolan, Santry, Dublin, 9

Depending on the species, most of the wasps in a colony in warmer climates, apart from the new queens, will die in late autumn, but sometimes a small percentage will hibernate. In some regions, such as the Sahara, some species will swarm like bees.

When walking in Bushy Park, Terenure, I watched with fascination as a crow pecked on the tail of a large golden retriever that was occupied chewing a stick. The owner told me that this happens on a regular basis and the dog doesn’t seem to mind.

John Miller, Terenure, Dublin, 6

Michael Viney welcomes observations at Thallabawn, Carrowniskey PO, Westport, Co Mayo. E-mail : viney@anu.ie. Include a postal address