It's the time of year when people talk of needing a change of air, a change of scene. And some of those who don't yearn for the sun lit beaches, like to find a change of vegetation. That means Kerry in many cases, and wandering through; sloping woods where the trees, oak and others, fall and loll, yet still go on growing and climbing. Some, moss covered into the heights, and carrying on top of the moss a light, easy ivy. As if this weren't enough you may see in the higher forks of the tree nourishing clumps of fern.
Myrtle is in place so abundant that the lovely cinnamon branches are being cut and used for y-shaped props in the garden. Holly grows where, in other parts of the country hawthorn and blackthorn form the hedges. And Gerald Wilkinson, in his book Trees in the Wild, tells us that holly was the original Christmas tree before we imported them from Norway.
And what a thinking tree to have prickly leaves within cow reach or deer reach, while higher up there is no need for the protection and they become just oval with a pointed tip. There is a distinctive smell in many of these woods where, in the more accessible places, paths are cut for walkers and the branches that are cut are just cleared back for easy passing and left to rot and become part of the nourishing earth again. You see so much birth, too, and willow. But arbutus is the tree most people associate with Killarney and that area. And the fruit looks so tempting, yet tastes insipid.
Not surprisingly, that connoisseur Jane Grigson has in her Fruit Book (Penguin), Arbutus Tarts or Pastry Cakes. She says that in November the fruit becomes mellow, and mild to the tongue. (They are also imported, she tells us, in tins from China.) Anyway, the fruits are put into little pastry cases, baked blind and brushed with red currant jelly. Perhaps glazed with the jelly, too. In French they are Gateaux d'Arbouses. And the tree is Arbousier.