Spanish Strawberry Trees and the Neolithic in Ireland
How a botanical curiosity can lead us back to our origins
With no predetermined subject for my next essay, I allowed myself to slip into a serendipitous wormhole, embarking from an ecological curiosity in my vicinity here in Sligo, visiting the Iberian peninsula and returning to Irish myth and origins. Each time I open myself to the land I find this web of history and meaning; the fabric of our lived experience.
I’ve just finished Eoghan Daltun’s ‘An Irish Atlantic Rainforest’, in which he recounts the rewilding of a piece of temperate rainforest in County Kerry. It is a touching, timely and instructive book highlighting the dearth of wild nature in our land and sketching a plan for pulling back these incredible places from the brink of desolation.
This delectable portal opened when I read of Daltun’s introduction of the strawberry tree, Arbutus unedo, to the rainforest. He remarked that it is predominantly a Mediterranean inhabitant, but occurs in the wild in Ireland in two distinct areas; in County Kerry in multiple locations and in County Sligo in one location on the shore of Lough Gill, a few minutes downhill from my doorstep. I must, the investigator intoned, investigate!
Arbutus unedo, the strawberry tree, overlooking Lough Gill
An online search quickly gleaned some leads. There has, evidently, been much debate on the provenance of this tree. Its presence here, when taken alongside its absence from more proximal European locations like northern France and Britain, is incongruous. A recent paper by Micheline Sheehy-Skeffington studying this enigma proved particularly enlightening.
The strawberry tree, so named due to its red fruit, does indeed originate in coastal Mediterranean sites. It lives all around the rim of the sea, from North Africa around to Turkey, Greece, Italy, France and Spain. Arbutus is a genus of flowering plants of the Ericaceae family. Unedo means ‘I eat only one’, so the astute reader may surmise that this fruit does not taste as good as it looks. It likes rocky, well-drained soils, which in an Irish context means lake shores, cliffs and woodland margins. Extreme cold and aridity are not tolerated. The mild, wet, Gulf-stream-induced climate of the west of Ireland suits this plant, but this is likely to be the northern limit of its possible range. Neighbours are often yew, oak and holly, stalwarts of the ancient woodland.
The strawberry tree was generally held to be native to Ireland; that is, it was assumed to have colonised the land along with other flora and fauna following the last glacial period around 10,000 years ago. The oldest proven presence is from 4,200 years ago as charcoal unearthed on Ross Island in County Kerry. Recent research has indicated, however, that it may be an archaeophyte- a species not originally native, but introduced by humans in ancient times. Irish specimens are genetically similar to those in northern Iberia, near San Sebastián. The Pyrenees act as a barrier to genetic mixing in this species; the plants in France and Italy are of a different lineage to the Iberian and Moroccan plants. This means that the Irish trees came to us by sea. Species that arrive on the island directly from Iberia are termed ‘Lusitanian’, after the Roman name for the peninsula.
The majority of locations where the tree is found in Couny Kerry have a Chalcolithic Age copper mine close by. Ross Island on Lough Leane is the oldest-known copper mine in Europe. People were mining and smelting here 4,400 years ago. The next oldest site in Europe is in northern Iberia; a pattern emerges, a connection gleams. The strands interweave and lead to a tantalizing proposition; a proto-Celtic culture expanding up the Atlantic coast of Europe from Iberia to Ireland, then spreading east to Britain and continental Europe. These people brought their farming methods, their metallurgy, and their strawberry trees. A clue to the reason for the tree’s selection for the journey overseas can be found in the traditional Portuguese brandy Medronho, which is made with Arbutus fruit. The fruits could also be a chance passenger on the boats, though this is unlikely as they are not very durable. I prefer the more intentional explanation; the recreation of the comfort of original home habits in a new and unknown environment.
Mesolithic charcoal was mostly oak, with some ash and alder. Around 4,000 years ago we see the charcoal record beginning to feature Arbutus, indicating a change to open scrubland following the felling of the mature oak woodland. It is likely that, once introduced, it would spring-up in recently-coppiced woodland around the mines, taking advantage of the low cover to satisfy its hunger for light. The trees would then die back as the woodland regrew around and over them, crowding them out. Their only long-term niches are the marginal places on cliffs, crags and lake shores.
And so, finally, to myth; our inevitable destination. I have talked previously of the truth that lives in myth and the clues laid out to our roots. There is a famous story in Ireland about Diarmuid and Gráinne. The myth tells of Diarmuid, a warrior with a rampaging band of hunters known as the Fianna. He elopes with Gráinne, betrothed to the great Fionn mac Cumhaill, leader of the Fianna. The band pursues the two lovers across the country. At one point in the tale they encounter some people at Glenflesk, close to Lough Leane, who come from ‘Tir threabhar-ghlain Tharrngaire’ (the land of fair-cultivated Tharrngaire) and who have brought ‘cnó corcra agus ubhla caithne agus caora cumhra’ (crimson nuts and arbutus berries and sweet berries) from there. Here we have, in myth, the original encounter between the Mesolithic Hunger-Gatherer band and the Neolithic Iberian agriculturists a few miles from the very place where they would settle and begin to reshape a country.
The final, completing link is to note that Diarmuid and Gráinne did eventually make peace with their pursuers and settled in Sligo. There is a cave here named after them, not far from where some strawberry trees overlook the darkly glistening water of Lough Gill.