Fungi and laurel ecosystem in Rivervalley & Brackenstown Swords Co. Dublin.

Brackenstown part of Rivervalley park (Swords Co. Dublin) is a enchanting area and its abundance of mushrooms is no less magical. After reading Entangled Life (Merlin Sheldrake) I find fungi fascinating. Are mushrooms in control of the planet? Quite possibly!

The mushroom sticking up out of the ground, the bit we are familiar with, is the fruit and only the tip of the iceberg to use an apt saying. The mycelium – the ‘wires’ that connect all the mushrooms below our feet, is a network so vast it makes our internet look like a single spiderweb in comparison. The network is so dense that there is approximately 500km below each footstep you take. But, I hear you say, it’s different than our network, it doesn’t ‘do’ anything, it’s primitive right? Actually no, it does far more than our network. It’s an inexplicably fast communication network (light speed anyone?) and a nutrient transportation network. The Mycelium is hollow, like a tube or a tunnel, not a wire. If that peaks your interest I recommend reading the book.

Mushrooms have been studied in Brackenstowns as far back as (at least) 1896. The Irish naturalist has two Journal entries from that year, over 125 Years ago. It would seem that there’s certainly some interesting ecosystems here.
Further reading of those Journals at the links below.

M’Weeney (1896) Fungi From Brackenstown, Co. Dublin. The Irish naturalist, Vol. V, No. 1, pp. 6-11, January, 1896
http://sources.nli.ie/Record/PS_UR_066970

Rea, C. (1898). Additions to Mr. Greenwood Pim’s “Fungi of the Counties of Dublin and Wicklow.” The Irish Naturalist, 7(12), 286–289. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25521509

Radical Change to the ecosystem.

Brackenstown is undergoing a lot of change at the moment. There’s a huge development planned to ‘upgrade’ hundreds of acres to a regional park and merge it with river valley park. I’m not against change, nature is change.

Part of the development is the extermination of the Laurel which grows there. I say extermination because it is that way. About an acre of laurel has been literally wiped out with heavy machinery and that’s just the start, it’s all going. I understand the Laurel is an ‘invasive’ species and according to the unknown writer of this article on Fingal county councils website, “If left to their own device, the Laurel will eventually dominate the entire woodland.” There’s no reference to say if that’s a scientific fact or madeup hearsay. I have my doubts, sounds like a bad immigration policy.

What about control? Isn’t that an option? It has been there for 300 years without any control and it has not dominated the entire woodland in that time. How long is the writer planning for? ‘Eventually’ everything happens. There are many non native species of tree in Ireland that dominate the woodland – Sycamore for example pushes out native trees, but they are not routinely cut down, in fact they appear to be planted on purpose in some civic areas.

A section of laurel cleared. This was an enclosed tunnel of Laurel.

All that’s left is a steaming pile.

The Cherry Laurel ecosystem

The Cherry Laurel does indeed prevent growth of some other species but so do other plants, so do humans. Survival of the fittest, Charles Darwin wrote a whole book on it. Laurels also contribute. They provide beautiful tunneled walks, shelter from the wind and rain, dry areas underfoot and amazing natural seats to sit and bathe in the wonder that nature offers. All these featured are being lost with the removal of the laurel. I don’t think these aspects get considered because I don’t think the person who took a little information on the Laurel and decided to exterminate it has ever sat and truly experienced it. If you want to I’ll show you – When all your stresses, anxieties, worries, cares, evaporate amidst the magic you may have better context to make a decision that affects so many. I haven’t even mentioned the birds and animals that use these areas as corridors.50% of the fungi I recorded in the study were on the cherry laurel.

A Laurel Grove soon to disappear.

The Cherry Laurels in Brackenstown also provide a habitat for the fungi. The fungi and lichens on display are amazing. I wonder what will happen them once all the Laurel have been eradicated? Will they remain or will they also be lost? I don’t know. It’s for this reason I’ve tried in my amateur way to record what is there in some photos. Hopefully I can identify these in time. I can check back in a few years and see if any survive their holocaust. About half of them grow on Cherry Laurels or in their vicinity.

Legacy

I think the complete removal of the cherry Laurel is wrong, a knee-jerk, short-sighted, populist reaction made without all the information. I think it’s one of the decisions we’ll regret. I saw a documentary recently about the burning of the big houses. A period in Ireland, after a change in the land laws, where some people thought it would be a good idea to burn all the big estate houses that littered the country, their aim was to remove the invasive species, the aristocrats. In doing so they burned centuries of history, Irish craftsmanship and written historical record, it seems stupid now.

I’m in favour of control and cultivation, after all Brackenstown is a garden and the laurel was intentionally put there. The landscape is described in detail by Finola O’Kane in Landscape Design in Eighteenth-Century Ireland: Mixing Foreign Trees with the Natives. The Garden has been said to as important as other historic gardens like the celebrated gardens at Versailles. Jonathan Swift (Guillivers Travels) frequented these gardens, hopefully they inspire many more.

Record of fungi at Brackenstown 2023

I’ve added a name suggested by PICTUREMUSHROOM app. If any are wrong then feel free to send me a correction. You can send it in a comment or directly on the contact page.

Images from 24th November 2023, Brackenstown. Swords Co Dublin.

Group 1: TURKEY TAIL (on Cherry Laurel)