Glengarriff, West Cork. 8th July 2014
I went searching for this rare plant since we were
passing through Glengarriff while on holiday.
It is unusual, in that it is an American plant widely
distributed across the eastern half of Canada and the
USA.; but only found wild in two areas of Ireland.
A few locations in Europe have been found and put down to movement of American military in the World Wars.
More recently another site has been found in Northern England..
It was originally found in 1954 by the notable botanist,
D.A Webb around Lough Mask in County Mayo at
several sites. This created quite a bit of interest and
in 1970 a visiting couple of botanist , Mr and Mrs
Butcher found a site in Glengarriff, County Cork.
Webb and Halliday visited the Glengarriff site in
August 1973 and found six stations all within a 1km
of the town.
The story was written up in Watsonia and
from this I got directions to re-visit the site
since the early 70's with additional houses
and a deterioration of the small fields no longer being
farmed. However walking up the track we came across an wet flush area which held several
100 plants in flower.
A second site was found later that afternoon just
to the East, but both sites are being invaded
by Rhododendron and it is possible that within just a few years these sites will be lost. I pulled up a few small Rhododendron as a token effort at control.
There is still controversy about whether IrishSt.John's Wort is a native of Ireland as argued
by D.A.Webb but to date the only sites remain
Lough Mask and Glengarriff . I find this
surprising, if really native. There is a parallel
on the West Coast of the USA where it has also
been found, but in America these remote sites
are not treated as native.
Ref: Wildflowers of Cork City and County.
by Tony O'Mahony The Collins Press
