Brown Martin - The Burren

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The aim of this series is to interest the general
reader in the wildlife of Britain by recapturing
the enquiring spirit of the old naturalists.
The editors believe that the natural pride of
the British public in the native flora and fauna,
to which must be added concern for their
conservation, is best fostered by maintaining
a high standard of accuracy combined with
clarity of exposition in presenting the results
of modern scientific research.

William Collins
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This eBook edition published by William Collins in 2018
Copyright David Cabot and Roger Goodwillie, 2018
Photographs Individual copyright holders
David Cabot and Roger Goodwillie assert their moral right to be identified as the authors of this work.
Cover design linocut by Robert Gillmor
Illustrations by Martin Brown
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Source ISBN: 9780008183783
Ebook Edition November 2018 ISBN: 9780008183806
Version: 2018-11-14

W ITH T HE B URREN , the New Naturalist Library achieves a significant milestone. Regional volumes have been a distinctive part of the collection ever since the beginning; Londons Natural History was the third of the series. However, the Burren is the first Irish natural region to receive the full treatment, although it is no surprise that this is not its first appearance in the series. This extraordinary area of Carboniferous limestone, situated to the south of Galway Bay in Co. Clare, has long been known to generations of botanists for its remarkable flora. David Cabot, in his major New Naturalist volume Ireland (NN 84), gives it almost 40 pages. It first appears in Wild Flowers of Chalk and Limestone (NN 16), in which J. E. Lousley draws attention to the areas unique association of species: there is nowhere in Europe where Mediterranean and arcticalpine plants grow together in a similar way. And Michael Proctor, in his now classic Vegetation of Britain and Ireland (NN 122), describes the Burren as supporting the richest limestone grassland in Ireland.

It has to be said that all this eulogising over the areas exciting botany is in marked contrast to some of the earliest reports commissioned by officialdom. David Cabot, in his previous volume, describes how one of Oliver Cromwells commissioners entering the Barony of Burren describes it as a country where there is not water enough to drown a man, wood enough to hang one, nor earth enough to bury him.

It is true that for the visitor unfamiliar with the area, the first impression is often of a bleak, inhospitable vista of bare limestone. However, closer acquaintance reveals characteristic shallow transitory lakes, known locally as turloughs, fens and Hazel scrub, all with as much interest for the zoologist as for the botanist. It is also easy to overlook that the Burren has an Atlantic coastline, including the Aran Islands, with the spectacular bird cliffs of Inishmore and Inishmaan.

David Cabot and Roger Goodwillie have collaborated to produce a masterly account of this remarkable area, integrating all aspects of its physical geography, landscape history and wildlife. The final chapter looks to the future and considers the problems of harmonising the competing pressures of farming and tourism. Both authors are among Irelands most distinguished field naturalists. David Cabot is both an environmental policy advisor and eminent ornithologist, and already an experienced contributor to the New Naturalist Library with his earlier volumes Ireland , Wildfowl (NN 110) and, with Ian Nisbet, Terns (NN 123). Roger Goodwillie is a botanist and ecologist with a special interest in biogeography as well as in turloughs and woodlands. He has been a consultant on habitat evaluation and environmental impact for many years. The text is enhanced by the photography of Fiona Guinness, which was specially commissioned for the book.

T HIS IS NOT A GUIDEBOOK TO THE B URREN . It does not set out to tell the reader where to go to see the greatest spectacle or the rarest plant, although it does give some of this information in passing. Rather, it is an attempt to give the background story that will enrich a visit and hopefully bring to light something the reader is not aware of, whether it is the diversity of habitat in this small area, the history of its discovery or the relationship of a particular species to its environment.

The Burren attracts any naturalist with an eye for beauty, but it is the intricacies of the species ecology, their links to the soil or to a particular insect, that is really fascinating. All the time it invites questions about the past, the present and the future of the area, which the following chapters seek to address. Not only do plants here seem to grow on next to nothing, but all the organisms have survived the comings and goings of woodland, the multiple mouths of grazing animals and the passage of several civilisations over 6,000 years. How they have persisted in such exuberance and diversity is a testament to their past evolution and to the gene complement they have accumulated over several million years, allowing them to adapt to a multitude of different conditions.

In the chapters that follow, the botanical scientific and common names follow those in the third edition of Clive Staces New Flora of the British Isles (2010). After the first mention of the scientific name in each chapter, the common name is employed thereafter. Place-names follow those in the Ordnance Survey Ireland Discovery Series 1:50,000 maps (Sheets 51 and 52). The notation BCE means Before the Common Era (before BC ) and CE means Common Era ( AD ).

DC FOREWORD

I knew little about the Burren until 13 June 1961, when Bill Watts, one of my botany lecturers at Trinity College Dublin, took our class for a weeks fieldwork there. We stayed at Ballynalacken Castle Hotel, which I recall was rather spartan, but now, some 57 years on, has surely become somewhat luxurious. We were a serious group there were no student pranks or high jinks. Bill, a thoughtful and sometimes solemn character, introduced us to all the major habitats, where we carried out descriptive analyses of plant communities, paying homage to Braun-Blanquets analytical methods. We even stung the fen at the base of Mullagh More with a long auger, driven down to the plastic clay at the very bottom, 630 cm down. Those were five halcyon days in a magical landscape with a display of bewildering vegetation to confound phytogeographical botanists. What I observed and recorded on that precious trip resides in a brown standard exercise book I still sometimes dip into.