The woodland vegetation of Ireland, past, present and future

摘要

In the middle of Clongawny bog in south Offaly where I live there are five islands, tree-clad oases surrounded on all sides by an ocean of deep peat. These are the tips of moraine hills the encroaching bog never quite overwhelmed. Many lesser summitsstill lie buried beneath the peat. About forty years ago the great machines of Bord na Mona moved onto Clongawny and began their slow work of laying the grid of drains that would rob the bog of its life blood, skinning away its vegetation: and then patiently shaving away the peat, centimetre by centimetre. The wooded islands remained as silent watchers. Every spring a carpet of anemones bloomed under the oaks as they had done for tens of centuries, and no eye came to worship or admire.