PlantsMap

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8 plants worth knowing

Ireland

The “Emerald Isle” owes its greenery to a mild, rainy oceanic climate in which grass grows almost all year round. Most of the original oak forests were felled, so today the landscape is made up of pastures enclosed by hedgerows and dry-stone walls, extensive raised bogs and heathland with gorse. Thanks to the warm Gulf Stream, Arctic-alpine and Mediterranean plants grow side by side on the west coast.

Hover over a plant to see on the map where it grows.

where it grows

  1. Lesser trefoil 1

    herbaceous plant · Shamrock – national symbol of Ireland

    Lesser trefoil

    Trifolium dubium

    The three-leaved clover that, according to legend, St Patrick used to explain the mystery of the Holy Trinity to the Irish.
  2. Sessile oak 2

    tree

    Sessile oak

    Quercus petraea

    Derry and Kildare take their names from the oak – and remnants of Ireland’s ancient oakwoods survive at Killarney and Glendalough.
  3. Gorse 3

    shrub

    Gorse

    Ulex europaeus

    Golden with flowers, the spiny gorse thickets on Irish hillsides bloom almost all year round and smell of coconut.
  4. Strawberry tree 4

    tree

    Strawberry tree

    Arbutus unedo

    A Mediterranean “strawberry tree” that mysteriously grows wild beside the lakes of Killarney – thousands of kilometres from the rest of its range.
  5. Spring gentian 5

    flower

    Spring gentian

    Gentiana verna

    The azure stars of gentians on the limestone pavements of the Burren are one of the most extraordinary sights in Irish nature.
  6. Potato 6

    crop

    Potato

    Solanum tuberosum

    The Great Famine of 1845–1852, caused by potato blight, killed about a million Irish people and forced as many again to emigrate.
  7. Common hawthorn 7

    shrub

    Common hawthorn

    Crataegus monogyna

    In Irish folklore a lone hawthorn in a field is a “fairy tree” – nobody cuts one down, and in 1999 a road in Clare was redesigned to spare one.
  8. Hardy fuchsia 8

    shrub

    Hardy fuchsia

    Fuchsia magellanica

    In summer the red-and-purple flowers of fuchsia adorn the hedgerows of Kerry and West Cork – the Irish call it the “tears of God”.