Bracken creates its own ground shade preventing shrubs and trees from establishing like a forest canopy in miniature.
In the landscape, in winter, it gives a characteristic reddish-brown look to hillsides and open ground that combined with golden sunrise or sunset light gives a warming glow to the treeless Irish countryside as seen here until spring arrives again.
A 9th Century Irish poem refers to bracken and its characteristic autumn / winter colour:
SUMMER IS GONE
My tidings for you : the stag bells, Winter snows, summer is gone.
Wind high and cold, low the sun, Short his course, sea running high.
Deep-red the bracken, its shape all gone
The wild-goose has raised his wonted cry. Cold has caught the wings of birds ;
Season of ice—these are my tidings.
And in the late 1930s, a story from County Cavan:
Locally it is believed that the herb known as the "bracken", (which seems to me to be nothing other than the wild fern) is said to blossom and seed all in one hour, the hour being that from twelve to one o'clock on the night of the 21st (or 2th) of June. Of course to all appearance the bracken or fern never blossoms.
The person who succeeds in catching the seed is supposed to be all powerful. In order to catch it a person must go at its blossoming hour, mentioned above, and stand inside a circle of the brackens which he has carefully placed around him. While waiting inside this circle for the lucky hour, he is supposed to be tempted very strongly by the "Good People" (fairies) to leave the bracken-circle. They offer him all sorts of attractions from outside the ring in the endeavor to allure him out of it; for for once he leaves the ring, he fails to catch the bracken-seed.
And there is a lot in that story from Cavan, brackens like all ferns do not actually have seeds, nor flowers, but spread by spores (sporangiforms) and rhizomes.
Join me, Panoramic Ireland, to photograph and to learn more about the Irish countryside on a photography tour in 2021. No deposits are required to reserve a day for when we can travel again.
