Wild, windy and Ireland's best refuge for hobbits

The landscape of Fermanagh, it occurred to me, would be Ireland’s best refuge for hobbits, if we had them. The heights of the county are frowning and wild, it’s true, and even quite scary at the windy clefts of Cuilcagh’s summit, or under the Cliffs of Magho. Great limestone caves and swallow holes speak of unexplored tunnels to alien lands: Donegal, Leitrim, Cavan, hemming the Shire on three sides, and closing it off from the sea.

In the rain shadow of all this, however, is the intimate, drumlin landscape of grottoes, gorges, woods and hundreds of hushed, reedy lakes.

Even the great expanse of Lough Erne, an ideal playground for hobbits when young, is full of little islands for modest, measured lives.

Botany, perhaps, is a proper passion for hobbits, dealing as it does with families of plants and the neighbourliness of nature. It is pursued over time, beneath the clash of world affairs, in slow, attentive steps through the herbage of the land. And the botany of Fermanagh, as it happens, with its intricate mix of rocks, its moist and mazeful glacial overburden, has much to teach about Ireland’s natural history as a whole.

There is nothing remotely hobbity, however, about the new wildflower book that has just emerged from the county – it would take a pair of hobbits, indeed, just to lift it. Its publisher, the grandly named National Museums Northern Ireland, has already set several records in the weight of its books – huge, glossy volumes on dragonflies, butterflies, moths, mosses and more – but in The Flora of County Fermanagh it has excelled itself. The book’s 864 A4 pages, full of colourful pictures and maps, tip the scales at more than four kilos, which must make it the heaviest publication in Irish natural history.

Its remarkably modest price of £25 echoes those of its predecessors and might be thought to balance the cost of having the book posted, but it actually indicates substantial finance from the Northern Ireland Environment Agency and the Botanical Society of the British Isles. An immense amount of research has gone into it, building on the fieldwork of naturalists over two centuries and topped up by 35 years of tramping the land by its two authors.

Ralph Forbes and Robert Northridge must not mind if the picture of them jointly clutching a peat corer at the reedy fringes of Corracoash Lough encourages my hobbit fantasy. Their exuberant grins peer from beneath twin mops of grey hair (one with matching beard), and, while, perhaps, marginally taller than most cinematic representations, they certainly exude the happy and robust togetherness of their kind. They are also expert and excellent communicators, if not quite a match for the narrative skills of the redoubtable Bilbo Baggins.

Their devotion shines through in relaxed and readable accounts of some 1,200 plant species so far recorded in Co Fermanagh – ferns and their allies, along with the wildflowers. The notoriously variable brambles alone need 13 pages, each kind with discussion of its habitat and many with their own precise little maps. Like the six Fermanagh forget-me-nots, each with a particular history and preference for wetness, these illuminating profiles give the book both a keen local feel and a valuable, island-wide relevance.

The county’s rarer, more glamorous treasures include the globeflower, Trollius europeaus, of my drawing, queen of the buttercup family and national flower of Lapland. It blooms at the fringes of several lakes and their islands, some shared with the Republic, but only in Fermanagh does it dare to hoist its golden chalices on rocky, limestone shores that are submerged at winter’s highest floods.

How Ireland acquired its plants since the last ice age is discussed by Ralph Forbes. His account of the origin and immigration of our flora is enriched by fossil pollen research in Fermanagh’s bogs and lake muds, but goes on to tackle the many controversies entangled in the island’s postglacial mix of plant species.

The timing and nature of their arrival “remains an enigma”, he says, “after decades of biogeographical investigation”. But like most ecologists today, he is inclined to credit human activity, not land bridges, as Ireland’s main instigator of plant migration and success.

The sheer scale and inclusiveness of this huge book, with unhurried chapters on climate, agriculture, forestry and rich photography of landscapes and habitats, all at such an accessible price, are a sharp, if incidental, reminder of the Republic’s comparative poverty.

We must be grateful that the Heritage Council has survived the storm as an independent partner of the Department of Arts, Heritage and Gaeltacht. But it has been left without a penny for the myriad grants – most quite small – that have meant so much to publications and projects rooted in communities and countryside.

Its website, heritagecouncil.ie, is as vigorous as ever and worth a visit. A look at the incredible spread and variety of its patronage will show what remains to be done.

Eye on Nature: Your queries and observations

Driving home on the N7 outside Urlingford, we saw a young vixen dining on a bag of castaway chips. She dared the traffic on both lanes, to stay on the traffic island and consume the food. An amazing sight.

Regina Cleary

Crosspatrick, Co Kilkenny

While out walking on the last day of December we noticed very early celandines in full bloom on the Sulphur Hill.

Chris O’Neill

Lisdoonvarna, Co Clare

I found this insect in the photograph I’m sending you on the roof of my car recently.

Kate Rogan

Ballynahinch, Co Down

The tiny insect was a weevil, Curculio nucum, that bores into hazelnuts and lays an egg that, when it hatches out, eats the kernel. When the nut falls to the ground the grub chews its way out and burrows into the ground to pupate.

I noticed two rooks on the chimney pot, bathing in the smoke. Presumably fumigating their feathers against mites.

Derek Pullen

Bray, Co Wicklow

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