Ireland

Botany is not really my priority for a while as we enjoy excellent weather in Bantry Bay. Also I don't have my photo-processing software here so these are out of the camera preview pictures which I will update when I have them topped and tailed at home.

A quick stop on the way over at the old Chetwynd viaduct near Cork that last carried a train in 1950s. There's a cafe...

Bere Island - once a defence station for the UK and still inhabited

A shopping trolley joins three cars (one mine) on the ferry

A British gun still in place

Rocks covered in lichen and Sea-spurrey / Thrift

Gateposts that have lost their way

Golden Rod - still a delight in the lanes

I saw lots of botany but little in get-the-camera-out state as it is so dry. It took me a while to recognise dessicated Purple Loose-strife - everywhere in ground that must normally be wet but isn't now.

At the heritage centre I saw and purchased a new book - "The Wild Plants of Bere, Dursey, Whiddy and other islands in Bantry Bay" which will be a great stimulus for further exploration here. Pleased to see that I had spotted many of the featured species for Bere - even if dessicated and past flowering.

Plantago coronopus - Buck's Horn Plantain rosette 

Golden Rod and DBS in the lanes

There were five cars / vans going back - just possible and hemming me in my drivers seat as "the one in middle". You reverse onto this ferry - which is just something you pick up from observation !

Then yesterday we got to Whiddy Island just near Bantry where I chased up a site from the book - Asplenium onopteris - Irish Spleenwort which is rare in Ireland and "one of 16" species that occur in Ireland and not Great Britain. There is some doubt about the true identity of this population I gather and I haven't got a fern book with me but this looks like the thing. There were some plants that seemed like Black Spleenwort (which we do have) nearby.