Flora

Warmer weather can sound promising for plant life, bringing new crops, more exotic gardens, even vineyards. Changes in farming and horticulture will have their own impact on Ireland’s countryside and ecosystems, as maize, lucerne, red clover and sunflowers flourish in the fields. But even away from human activity our native plants will face different patterns of growth, redistribution on the land - and sometimes extinction. The National Botanic Gardens predicts that some 170 plant species, about a fifth of the native flora, are likely to be threatened by climate change between now and 2050.

 

Killarney Fern

The Killarney Fern is a member of the Filmy fern family. It has long, dark green, translucent leaves which can be up to 45cm long.

©Michael Viney

Killarney Fern
©Michael Viney

Killarney Fern

The Killarney Fern is a member of the Filmy fern family. It has long, dark green, translucent leaves which can be up to 45cm long.

©Michael Viney

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Butterwort

The large-flowered Butterwort is a Irish native wildflower.

©Michael Viney

Butterwort
©Michael Viney

Butterwort

The large-flowered Butterwort is a Irish native wildflower.

©Michael Viney

Enlarge image

Among these species are ‘Alpine’ plants - remnants of the last ice age surviving in the shadowy heights of the western mountains. Plants of sand dunes and shingle-banks, among them wild asparagus, seakale and sea holly, face destruction by rising seas and storm-surges. On hillside streams in Kerry, the rare and beautiful Killarney fern would not survive a summer week without its soft spray of water. Degradation of peatland could lose us the marsh saxifrage and mountain cloudberry, along with rare mosses and liverworts, but we should also miss the more common, but still special, plants of the bog – butterwort, the beautiful ‘bog violet’, for example, and the little scarlet-flushed platters of sundew, their dewy hairs a trap for flies, ants and beetles.

Sea Holly
©Michael Viney

Communities of many ordinary native plants could be threatened as climate change alters their habitats, as lowland species move up to crowd out those of higher ground, or as invasive alien plants respond to warmer conditions. One dramatic example is the new surge of gunnera, the ‘giant rhubarb’ with huge leaves, on coastal peatland and islands in the west. Around our shores, a warming sea threatens to help the spread of invasive alien seaweeds, such as the smothering ‘Japanese wireweed’ (Sargassum muticum) already found at many points around our coasts.