The Attack of the Killer Rhododendrons Read online

  And this is all well and good, because most species of rhododendron know how to sit still and shut up. But at any large party, there is always one guest who doesn’t know when to stop drinking or when to go home. In the world of large and showy flowering plants, that unruly guest is Rhododendron ponticum, sometimes called the common rhododendron, which is native to parts of southern Europe and the Middle East. The great ancient oak forests of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales are under attack from this pushy introduced monster. Despite being a big and blustery plant, it was largely unknown in Ireland until the mid-1900s. But from then on, its destructive ways were well understood by anyone who loved oak forests. The plant has even been given an Irish Gaelic name—ródaideandrón. I was off to a national park in Ireland’s southwest to find it.

  Rhododendrons are not the only botanical import to the Emerald Isle. According to Sylvia Reynolds of Ireland’s National Botanic Gardens, almost as many alien plant species have been uncovered in Ireland as there are plants native to the country. Although humans have been bringing new plants to the British Isles since Neolithic times, the last two centuries have seen a rapid acceleration, with 920 human-introduced plant forms arriving in Ireland. One of the most influential plant additions to the country was the potato, and I was determined to find a few of those too.

  My only previous trip to Ireland had not gone entirely well. I had travelled to Dublin to examine a stuffed Labrador Duck, and despite trying with all my heart to love the country, I had found Dublin noisy and crowded, simultaneously uncivilized and overly civilized. On this return trip to Ireland, I promised myself that I would steer well clear of large cities, stick to tourist-approved venues, drink only in the most highly regarded pubs, and lodge in only the friendliest hostelries in the land.

  Arriving at Shannon airport, I had my first and only pleasant surprise of the day; at no extra charge, the car rental agency had upgraded me to a much bigger vehicle. “Big” is, of course, a relative word. By North American standards, this car was a tiddler, but I was pleased to see that my backpack fit in the boot, and my legs fit under the steering wheel.

  My newly purchased travel guide to southwestern Ireland used less than flattering terms to describe Limerick City, which, “at first sight has something rather drab about it.” The guidebook suggested that visitors to the city, despite the community’s recent facelift, wouldn’t find anything much cheerier on the second, or indeed any subsequent, viewing. But unless your destination is the tiny community of Newmarket-on-Fergus, travelling from Shannon to anywhere else in Ireland requires a dissection of Limerick.

  And High Holy Almighty, what a trip it was. I could deal with being on the wrong side of the road, and managed the stick shift in my left hand like a professional, but the roads were far too narrow for driving habits developed on mighty North American thoroughfares. For the first time—but certainly not the last—I wished that I had insisted on the smaller rental car. I had navigation notes for the best route through Limerick on the seat beside me, but they proved entirely useless as I repeatedly spotted street signs too late to make necessary lane changes. I eventually gave up on my notes and started looking for signs for route N20 on the assumption that it would eventually lead me to the N21 and south through the wilds of County Limerick.

  I SUSPECT THAT THERE IS NO WAY to fully appreciate the history of Ireland without understanding the impact of potatoes, known as práta in Irish Gaelic. To understand potatoes in Ireland, you have to understand Sir Walter Raleigh. This is a challenge all by itself; even straightforward details like the year of his birth and the proper spelling of his surname are not beyond debate. Some authorities claim that when Raleigh returned to the British Isles from one of his expeditions to North America, perhaps his 1587 trip, he brought spuds back with him. Others claim that Thomas Hariot should get the credit for introducing potatoes to the Old World. Some of those who favour the Raleigh story give him credit for planting potatoes at his Irish estate at Myrtle Grove, Youghal. Others claim that the first cultivation of potatoes in Ireland occurred at Castle Matrix when Raleigh turned them over to Lord Southwell. I was not due to travel anywhere near Myrtle Grove, but my rhododendron adventure was going to take me close to Castle Matrix, and so I conveniently chose to believe that this was the site of the potato’s first cultivation in Ireland.

  Potatoes grew better than just about any other crop in the stony soils of the Emerald Isle, and soon came to completely dominate the diet of Irish peasants. Potatoes contain little protein, and in centuries past, in order to meet their nutritional needs some folks consumed between four and six kilograms of potatoes each day. Putting this much faith in just one crop is a pretty risky thing. One bad harvest is going to leave you rather hungry. One total crop failure and you and your family are going to starve to death. This is exactly what happened in Ireland in the mid-1840s. A parasitic water mould known as Phytophthora infestans causes late blight of potatoes, and in one week in the summer of 1846 the blight destroyed virtually the entire Irish potato crop. Between famine and emigration, the population of Ireland fell from 8.5 million to 6.5 million in just six years.

  The community of Adare lies southwest of Limerick, and Rathkeale lies southwest of Adare. If my guidebook was to be trusted, Castle Matrix could be found just southwest of Rathkeale, although I was damned if I could find it or anything that looked, sounded, or tasted like it. I couldn’t find a single helpful sign. I began to wonder if all the signs come down in the off-season, or whether the lack of useful signs was a way to get tourists to stop at convenience stores to ask for directions. I stopped at a convenience store, but when I asked the young fellow behind the counter about Castle Matrix, he just gave me a big shrug. As I reached the door on the way out he called, “Not from around here.” I don’t know if he was referring to me or to himself.

  After my failure to find Castle Matrix, I mistakenly trusted my guidebook when it suggested that I might want to travel to Ballingary and from there find the hillside at Knockfierna, site of a well-preserved famine village. Before the famine, Knockfierna was home to 1,000 people. Only 300 remained after. A heritage group had developed a park to commemorate those persons lost to the famine, with restored dwellings of the former residents. But all of this came to nothing for me, because I could find neither evidence of Knockfierna nor anyone to point me in the right direction. On the road to Ballingary, a fellow in a grey Land Cruiser tucked in behind me and tailgated me for the next five kilometres. As we approached the town, I slowed down for schoolchildren, and the Land Cruiser took the opportunity to zoom by me. The driver also took the opportunity to give me the finger.

  In a last-ditch effort to find something linked to the potato famine in Ballingary, I headed for the local churchyard. I was hoping to find graves of people who had died in or around 1846. Many of the headstones were too new for persons carried off by the famine, but a few stones had been rubbed nearly smooth by time, hosting a thick crust of lichen. James Reidy had prepared a headstone for his wife, Mary, who died on March 23, 1910, at the age of seventy-four. Hence, Mary would have survived the famine as a young girl.

  In three ways, southwest Ireland is like Prince Edward Island on Canada’s east coast. Both spots are populated by people of Irish ancestry. People in both regions are really big on cultivating potatoes. Finally, in both places it is assumed that everyone knows where they are, and knows how to get to where they need to be. If you can find a road sign in southwest Ireland, rest assured that it won’t be helpful. Three roads leading out of Ballingary were signposted to lead to Newcastle West (An Caisleán Nua), my next destination. I took the road with the newest-looking sign. At a crossroad a bit further along, a sign indicated that I could get to Kilmallock by turning left, but gave no hint of how to get to Newcastle West. I turned right.

  This was probably a mistake. About ten kilometres later, I spotted a gigantic broken curb jutting into the road the instant before it tore a hole the size of a €2 coin in my front right sidewall. I kept control of
the car and pulled into a quiet side street.

  Before leaving Shannon airport, I had paid the rental agency a lot of money for the best possible car insurance and the promise of roadside assistance. In the hope that I could get someone else to change my tire, I set off to find a public telephone. Coming to a crossroad, I found a sign that told me I could turn right for Limerick or left for Tralee. Still no indication of how I could get to Newcastle West, and no telephone box in sight. I hailed a fellow pedestrian, only to be told, “I don’t speak.” To Canadians in particular, or as a matter of general principle? While I was hauling the flat tire off my rental, a big white lorry pulled up, and the driver stuck his head out the window. He asked me if I had a puncture, and I thought for a moment that he was going to offer to help me put on the spare. Instead, he looked the car up and down, told me that new cars aren’t supposed to get punctures, and drove off.

  When I finally found Newcastle West and my hotel, I called the rental car agency’s roadside assistance hotline. I was told that my super-duper, extra-costly, truly special, all-inclusive insurance package included everything except tires. If the car had gone over a cliff, they would have been straight out with a replacement vehicle, but I was on my own when it came to the punctured tire.

  Of all the towns in southwest Ireland, I had chosen to spend the night in Newcastle West because of an entry in my guidebook that described Duggan’s Pub on Bridge Street as having a fine selection of beer. Trying to walk off the tension of the day, I followed street signs toward the town centre, reasoning that Bridge Street would have a bridge, that a bridge would cross a river, and that a river would be a good place for a town centre. When I found Duggan’s Pub, a sign above the door proclaimed Frank and Kathy Duggan as Proprietors. A big metal gate barred the entrance, and the welcome mat, buried under competing levels of dirt and junk mail, hadn’t welcomed a drinker in quite some time. My guidebook was clearly in need of an update.

  I am told that the Atlantic Ocean’s Gulf Stream carries warm water north from the Caribbean to the coast of Europe, keeping Ireland unusually warm for its latitude. I am also told that some experts fear that global climate change brought on by greenhouse gas emissions could cause the Gulf Stream to stop flowing. On a cool and drizzly evening in Newcastle West, it was hard to believe that the Gulf Stream hadn’t already come to a screeching halt. As I trudged back to the hotel, I stumbled across Newcastle West’s Famine Cemetery. Now little more than an overgrown field twice the size of a tennis court, it is the resting spot for locals who had perished in the famine following the potato blight.

  I HAD BEEN TOLD that the Ring of Kerry around the Iveragh Peninsula was beautiful beyond belief, and that no trip to Ireland’s southwest could be considered complete without its circumnavigation. It should be just the place to find my first rhododendrons. My guidebook suggested that, without detours, the 180-kilometre road around the Ring of Kerry could be driven in three hours. This might be true for a professional driver in a Ferrari with racing suspension if the road was closed to all other traffic. I began to suspect that the woman who had written the guidebook had never been to the Ring of Kerry. Or indeed, to Ireland.

  The roads were twisting and painfully narrow, and I found I could afford only brief glimpses of the hills around me. Dairy cattle that dotted the hills were befriended by a smaller number of sheep. Stone houses, stone bridges, and stone walls were constructed from pickings of the stony soil. I needed a break, and pulled over at a wayside rest stop populated by an elderly gentleman who offered to take my picture with his donkey. I declined, and stared out over the hills, which were decorated in a thousand shades of green, punctuated by periodic flashes of blinding golden-yellow gorse bushes.

  The donkey, his handler, and I were soon joined by two tour buses, which disgorged their passengers to share the view with us. The visitors were all from New Jersey, and I indulged in my hobby of offering to take their photos with their cameras. Over the next ten minutes, the photo groups got bigger and bigger, and I had to step further and further back to get everyone in. I bumped into the donkey.

  Highway officials in Ireland are an optimistic lot. They seem to have no reservations about posting 100 kilometre per hour speed-limit signs in spots where that kind of velocity existed only in dreams. I had trouble averaging 50. White lines had been neatly applied to the road, but wherever it became too narrow for two lanes of traffic, the lines simply trailed off into the adjacent field. It didn’t help that touring cyclists lurked around every corner, and where no footpath existed, trail walkers tromped the middle of the road.

  I got my first good look at rhododendrons as I approached the community of Waterville (An Coireán), toward the far western reaches of the Ring of Kerry. Waterville knows full well that it is a resort town, and has no pretence about being anything else. It is the sort of place that you might want to visit for a week during the worst weather of the off-season. You could walk the whole town in your first two hours, confident in the knowledge that you had absolutely nothing else to do for the remainder of your stay but rest.

  I was particularly keen to see palm trees and fuchsia plants promised by my guidebook. Both were introduced to Ireland, and both were beneficiaries of the Gulf Stream’s warming influence. I found a few palm trees, but a lot more palm bushes, mainly in front of the Butler Arms Hotel. After two hours of walking up and through and around Waterville, I had seen not a single fuchsia.

  I searched for famine victims in the churchyard of St. Michael’s and All Angels, but found none. I did, however, find a lot of Huggards, some of whom had survived the potato blight, including

  Elizabeth, wife of Richard, died Dec 21 1904, aged 80;

  Martin, son of Thos, died 17 Sept 1896, aged 88;

  Mary, died 23 Sept 1896, aged 86;

  and Rebecca, died 9 December 1879, aged 40.

  Only then did it occur to me why I was likely having such trouble finding the headstones of anyone who had died in the famine. So rapid was the crop damage brought on by the blight, and so reliant was the populace on potatoes, that people in this part of Ireland died so quickly that the survivors were unable to keep up with the niceties of formal burials and fancy headstones. There were probably the remains of a lot of famine victims in mass graves. After giving thanks for my life of abundance, I sat on a stone wall and ate my grocery-store lunch of French apple lattices, individually wrapped cheeses from Denmark and Holland, and apples from Brazil.

  Rhododendrons became more common as I drove further around the Ring. At Sneem (An Snaidhm), I found them growing in abundance, first as roadside hedges, and then in bunches at a newly constructed Garden of the Senses. Away from this bit of tranquility, the south half of the Ring of Kerry was so rugged that almost every precious chunk of dry flat land had been snatched up for houses. Homes that hadn’t made a reservation early enough were left clinging to rocky slopes.

  Before leaving Canada, a colleague with Irish roots had insisted that I visit Staigue Fort. The fort is four kilometres up a single-cart track, at the top of a deep gorge, next to a sweet spring. Dating from the early centuries CE, Staigue was one of the largest and finest of Ireland’s pre-Christian stone forts. As befits a stone fort, the walls, six metres tall and four metres wide, were made entirely of stones with not a brick or dab of mortar in sight. Chinks between boulders were filled with stone flakes. The fort has not been properly excavated by archaeologists, but that hasn’t stopped experts from speculating that it had been built by a wealthy landowner or chieftain in need of great security. At one time, the fort presumably housed wooden buildings or tents, but those were long gone. The interior wall provided nine sets of switchback stairs to the wall tops. My guidebook told me that it was “fun to climb to the top,” but a big, official-looking sign asked me to “PLEASE KEEP OFF THE WALL TOPS BY ORDER OF THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC WORKS.” I was serenaded by the bleating of sheep and the laughter of four German visitors who hadn’t paid the €1 trespassing charge requested by the farmer who owns the field.<
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  After settling in to my bed and breakfast, I wandered the streets of Kenmare (Neidin) as evening fell. My search for a good meal gave me further reason to doubt the accuracy of the guidebook. It suggested that I was in for a “big treat” at a vegetarian restaurant on Henry Street. Having walked the length of Henry Street three times, I can state categorically that such a restaurant doesn’t exist. Thinking that I must have purchased a horribly out-of-date guidebook, I checked the publication date. It was one year old. Then I checked the book’s back cover and found that I had paid $26.95 too much for it. The town’s church bells rang the supper hour. Settling on a pizzeria, I was surprised, but not pleasantly surprised, when my vegetarian pizza arrived with more sausage than crust.

  On my post-dinner stroll I found Kenmare’s neolithic stone ring was right where it was supposed to be, peering down on the River Finnihy. At the centre, one really big stone was perched neatly on some smaller stones. This was surrounded by a ring of fifteen stones of various sizes, with a diameter of about seven metres. A circle of cedars had recently been planted outside the ring, and they should be quite impressive in about thirty years. Just down the hill, three sheep got into a bleating match.

  NOT so mANY KILOMETRES out of Kenmare, the N61 reaches mountainous country where sheep pick at miserly grass beside deep gorges. As everywhere else in the southeast, the road was narrow and twisting, and as I approached the pinnacle at Moll’s Gap I felt the first twinges of motion sickness.

  On the far side, I stopped at a pullout at the south end of Muckross Lake to settle my stomach. I found a sign indicating that the region had suffered a recent outbreak of Phytophthora ramorum, another parasitic water mould and the causative agent of sudden oak death. The sign explained that Laburnum, an introduced, yellow-flowered tree, and Rhododendron ponticum were particularly vulnerable to attack by this parasite, so that neither species should be taken from the park under any circumstances to avoid spread of the disease.