A "true" shamrock delighted the Empress of Japan yesterday. Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko are both keen botanists and were in Glendalough, Co Wicklow, on the first full day of a three-day unofficial visit to Ireland.
With them were about 20 members of the Japanese press and a large entourage of security personnel.
Curious tourists took pictures alongside the press photographers as the empress closely examined clusters of shamrock in the grass with park guide Gillian Stewart.
As Ms Stewart, an employee of the Wicklow Mountains National Park, explained, there were "many types of clover that people call shamrock". The empress positively cooed as she turned to the emperor to show him: "It is true shamrock."
A bright but frequently rain-soaked morning greeted their majesties on their first trip to Co Wicklow. Medieval scholar Dr Peter Harbison gave them a guided tour of the churches and monastic ruins of the sixth-century settlement, and then offered to the Japanese journalists his earnest praise for their royal family.
"You should be congratulated for having such a wonderful head of state," he told them."You would not find anywhere else in the world a royal family so interested in science and the arts. They are interested in the environment and wildlife."
The imperial couple are both in their early 70s and this is their second visit to Ireland. They came in 1985, then as the crown prince and princess, when they visited the Hill of Tara and Trinity College and also went to the west in a private capacity.
Empress Michiko, in an interview given before they travelled, said she had been taught on occasion by Irish nuns and recalled "the charm and loveliness of each one of them".
Ms Stewart, the park guide, described the couple as "really gentle and charming". "They were very knowledgable and were actually telling me a few things."
"They were particularly keen on the silver birch trees, because they have birch trees in Japan and the empress's crest is the silver birch, chosen for her by the emperor. She signs her name Silver Birch, she told me."
