Many thanks to all of you who turned up on a rainy Saturday afternoon in Ballincollig Regional Park to get to know some of the plants we live alongside.  In the end the weather was kind to us and there was a great exchange of information.

We saw a great many plants, including hawthorn, blackthorn, elder, alder, ground ivy, cow parsley, nettle, greater and ribwort plantain, meadowsweet and valerian.

For those of you who want to take their plant identification skills a bit further, a useful website is www.irishwildflowers.com. Zoe Devlin has taken many photos of our native plants. If a field guide is more your thing, I use Webb’s Irish Flora (keys, B&W pics). For colour drawings, see Collins Guide to Wildflowers of Britain and Ireland or Rose’s Flower Key.