Roadside Wildflowers of Southern Ireland

I took a tour of southern Ireland in July (photo tour link). For me, though, every tour is a plant tour. Here are some of the plants I saw along paths and roads:

blue tufted vetches (Vicia cracca, called bird vetch in the U.S.)
and unknown white flower (fools parsley, Aethusa cynapium?)

The roadside fences in Shannon were laden with this vine

large bindweed, Calystegia sylvatica

I recognized it as a bindweed, a group of plants native to Eurasia. My copy of Wildflowers of Ireland lists four bindweeds, three Calystegia species and one Convolvulus (morning glory family, Convolvulaceae). This appears to be large bindweed, Calystegia sylvatica, the largest of the group, native to southern Europe, not Ireland. It was introduced to Ireland because it is so pretty, where it has escaped.

large bindweed, Calystegia sylvatica

Fuchsias grow on the roadsides. Really! This is the common fuchsia (Fuchsia magellinica, evening primrose family, Onagraceae)) the most commonly grown fuchsia of some 117 species. It was introduced from coastal South America and escaped. It is a shrub that gets easily six feet tall, growing along roads. Very handsome!

fuchsia Fuchsia magellinica

Some are roadside plants of Ireland are roadside plants in North America too. For example clover. However,  white clover, Trifolium repens,(pea family, Fabaceae) is a native perennial in Ireland and there are at least two very similar species, western clover Trifolium occidentale, and strawberry clover, Trifolium fragiferum. I call my photo white clover based on where the plants are found and the fact that white clover is common and the other two are not. Introduced to North America, white clover is found in all of the continental United States and most of Canada.

white clover, Trifolium repens

Narrowleaf plantain, Plantago lanceolata (plantain family, Plantaginaceae) is another of Ireland's native perennials that is highly successful invader around the world. The USDA distribution map for it in North America shows its presence everywhere. In Ireland, the common name is given as ribbed plantain. 

narrowleaf plantain Plantago lanceolata

Here is the daisy, called lawn daisy in the U.S., Bellis perennis (sunflower family, Asteraceae), a native Irish perennial.

daisy, Bellis perennis
(you can only see clover leaves)

and the plant I called daisy but that is not "the daisy" of the British Isles, ox-eye daisy, Leucanthemum vulgare (sunflower family, Asteraceae). Behind it was what I took to be English ivy, Hedera helix, but the Wildflowers of Ireland gives the name as Atlantic ivy, Hedera hibernica (ivy family, Araliaceae), a closely related species. It was very abundant, as a ground cover as well as climbing stone walls.

ox-eye daisy and Atlantic ivy

I was quite taken by this one, meadowsweet, Filipendula ulmaria (rose family, Rosaceae). It has naturalized in eastern and northern North America, but I do not remember seeing it. In the USDA plants database the common name is given as queen of the meadow. A native Irish perennial, it is a pretty plant with a memorable sweet scent. Ireland's Wild Plants reports that in Galway, if a person languished under the influence of fairies,  putting meadowsweet under the bed would cure them by morning.

meadowsweet, Filipendula ulmaria

 
This is a tiny speedwell, likely the common field speedwell Veronica persica (plantain family, Plantaginaceae). I studied an introduced speedwell in California as part of my Ph.D. research, and have grown other species in my Colorado garden. It was good to see one "in the wild."

common field speedwell Veronica persica

 

Also fun to see in its native range was this thistle, probably spear thistle Carduus vulgare (sunflower family, Asteraceae). In the United States it is usually called bull thistle. Thistles are very pretty but we see too many of them growing as weeds, so it becomes hard to appreciate their beauty.

 spear thistle Carduus vulgare 

This next is another thistle that is out of control in North America, Cirsium arvense, called creeping thistle in Ireland and Canada thistle in North America. It is NOT from Canada, despite the name. In Ireland it is a native perennial wildflower, even though they too sometimes find it annoyingly aggressive. (Sunflower family, Asteraceae)

creeping thistle, Cirsium arvense

This stand of black medick, Medicago lupulina (pea family, Fabaceae) looks just like the ones growing in my backyard, though I treat it as a weed and do not let it get this luxurious. Americans dropped the k and write "black medic." It is a native Irish annual. Ireland has other small-leaved yellow-flowered "clovers" and four white and pink ones, so while some people point to black medick as "the shamrock" other people choose other clovers so the botanical identity of "the shamrock" remains a mystery.

black medick, Medicago lupulina

This pretty plant is great willowherb (Epilobium hirsutum, evening primrose family, Onagraceae), closely related to the fireweeds (Epilobium and Chamerion) of northern and mountainous forests of North America. 

great willowherb, Epilobium hirsutum

Here is a wall covered in another Irish native perennial, dewberry vines, Rubus caesius (rose family, Rosaceae). The fruits look like blackberries that somehow have too few round juicy fruit-covered seeds. They are very tasty though I was too early to pick wild ones.

dewberry, Rubus caesius

And self-heal, Prunella vulgaris (mint family, Lamiaceae) a minor medicinal that has been introduced widely and I have seen growing wild in the eastern United States. 

The colors of Irish roadside weeds seemed odd to me: lots of whites and purples. Roadside flowers in Colorado run to yellow. 

It looks from my post like the U.S. shares its roadside plants with Ireland. That is partly a bias of my photography. I post about well-identified plants. I saw lots of umbels along the roads that I could not easily identify, because there are at least 20 species of white-flowered species in Ireland, from wild carrot to cow parsley to hemlock. Likewise, I spotted cute wild geraniums but Ireland has 13 species (in the genera Geranium and Erodium). Ragwort (Senecio) was obvious until I discovered at least 7 ragwort-like composites, called ragwort or groundsel (in the genera Jacobea and Senecio). Shared species exist but this was not a careful comparison.

Ireland has about 1,100 native wildflowers, plus the exotics, but that makes a pretty manageable list for figuring out what plant I was looking at. Identification went better than I expected. But there are still many that got away, especially those less familiar to me.

The second reason American and Irish roadside plant are so similar, though, is that settlers from Europe brought plants with them. More than six million people from Ireland emigrated to the United States since the early 1800s. I reported 11 native Irish plants now widespread in the United States above. To successfully introduce those, only 1 person in 500,000 needed to bring a plant and care for it until it was growing well. Of course many more people than that did so. Most of the plants have some medicinal or food value And, immigrants from elsewhere in the British Isles or the continent of Europe could have brought these species. The shared roadside wildflowers attest to our colonial history.

For the tourist, that made Ireland the more welcoming; so many plants were familiar. And, in the rainy Irish climate, they grew large and flowered abundantly. Botanizing was great fun!

Comments and corrections welcome.

References

Devlin, Z.  2021.The Wildflowers of Ireland. 2md edition. Gill Books. Dublin, Ireland.

Mac Coitir, N. 2023. Ireland's Wild Plants. The Collins Press, Wilton, Cork, Ireland. 

Kathy Keeler

A Wandering Botanist

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