The polyanthuses I planted under our teenage oaks a decade or so ago have multiplied into a ragged, brilliant drift of flowers in early spring. Their colours have waxed, waned and reverted with the years and many now merge seamlessly with the acre's plain yellow primroses, but nowhere in their genes, it seems, is the wildflower's heavenly scent.
Primroses are special to the west in March, crowding even hedgebanks in full sun. Indeed, the whole moist island is kind to the primula family, so it comes as no surprise that breeds of polyanthus and auricula were probably the first garden plants to be raised here. They were hybrids of the multi-coloured primroses and cowslips from Eastern Europe, and the variable wild auriculas of the Alps and Appenines.
In a sumptuous new encyclopedia of Irish-raised plants, just published by the Irish Garden Plant Society, Charles Nelson lists 136 Irish auriculas grown in the Earl of Meath's garden at Kilruddery, Co Wicklow, beginning as early as 1736. But among the 5,300 plants he includes in A Heritage Of Beauty it is the cultivars of native Irish species that catch the ecologist's eye. Plants found in the wild are still being introduced, quite unchanged, into the garden nursery trade.
Most famous of all was the upright (fastigiate) Irish yew discovered on the limestone slopes of Cuilcagh Mountain, not far from Florencecourt, Co Fermanagh, in about 1740 and now cloned across the world (the mother tree can still be seen in the grounds of Florencecourt House).
The hope of collecting a striking or beautiful new form of a species, to please a patron, or clone or propagate for profit, has motivated plant-hunters for centuries and taken them to far-flung and even dangerous places. But there are finds to be made nearer home, in habitats that select plants for particular characteristics. Unlike the Irish yew that reaches for the sky, the prize these days can often be a plant that lies low. Mizen Head, Co Cork, for example, is one of the windiest places in Ireland, forcing vegetation into a dwarfed and creeping growth. Here, about 1970, Peter and Patricia Cox, from a Scottish nursery, came upon the low gorse of the south, Ulex gallii, hugging the ground as a mat-forming shrub. The common heather, Calluna vulgaris, also became a creeping plant, no higher than five centimetres. Cuttings cloned them into new plants for rockeries, or labour-saving ground-cover for the landscape gardener.
The winds and spray of the west have selected out other low-lying and salt-tolerant treasures. A common juniper found by holiday-makers near the sea at Derrynane, Co Kerry was "as prostrate as a lawn". Grown at home from cuttings, it was given a prize by the Royal Horticultural Society and launched on a gardening programme.
Wild ivy that has to struggle for survival in tiny pockets of soil on rock-faces or in other difficult, exposed conditions can take on attractive, often dainty, forms or colours. The latest addition to the Irish ivies in the nursery trade is the purple-stemmed Helix hibernica "Dungloe Gap", found by a collector on the Kerry mountainside in 1986.
Growing in the Botanic Gardens at Glasnevin is a creeping willow propagated from one found among moss on the summit of Muckish Mountain, Co Donegal, in 1866. The plant is still in perfect health, producing abundant catkins on branches no longer than 10 centimetres. Gardeners are still growing it from cuttings, but the original plant has never been refound on Muckish. This willow is thought to be a triple hybrid in a family notorious for crosses. But characteristics produced by local conditions (phenotypic adaptations) don't always breed true in later generations. A dwarf willow brought down from limestone cliffs in Leitrim and Sligo in 1854 will stay as a "bonsai" if grown in a pot but spring into a vigorous, bushy tree if given a free root-run.
SOME wild discoveries are, like the Irish yew, unmistakable sports, or spontaneous mutations. A whitefruited blackberry was found near Bray Head, Co Wicklow, a daisy with goldedged leaves appeared in Cabinteely, Co Dublin, a cream-streaked plantain turned up on the UCD campus in 1985. A real prize could be the red-flowered water-lily, reported 50 years ago as growing in a peaty lakelet two miles south-east of Slieve Snacht in Inishowen, Co Donegal. "It should be searched for, and if worthy given a name," says Charles Nelson.
Some plants have a regional occurrence within very variable groups. In parts of Kerry there's a species of hawkweed, the lovely, slender-stemmed "dandelion" of the drier countryside, that raises its flowers more than half a metre high: it's now a stately golden cluster for the garden.
Wildflowers that grow in colonies, often on ancient sites, can take on colour variations that seem more beautiful than the norm. The wood anemone, for example, usually a starry white in spring, can also be found tinged with pink or purple, or even the violet-blue of "Lucy's Wood", a wild variety spotted by Charles Nelson in a Co Carlow garden.
As for the common primrose, with which we began, the most one can hope for, apparently, is a double-flowered form in yellow, like one found on a bank neary Ballymoney, Co Antrim, about 1930, and still being sold in Scotland 40 years later. Pink-flowered primroses near houses are always unofficial crosses with garden hybrids.
A word about finding something "different". Don't dig it up, whatever the temptation: times have changed since the old gardening plunder was acceptable. If it's an interesting form of a familar plant, try rooting a slip. If it's really, really special and strange, send a photograph to Dr Tom Curtis at Duchas.
A Heritage of Beauty (£40, plus £6 for post and packing) is available from the Irish Garden Plant Society, National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, Dublin 9.
