Furze

There is a fresh feeling to the countryside this week. Much needed rain is putting a touch of green back into the yellow-brown grass and the daffodils are beginning to open out, giving a wonderful golden-yellow display in our gardens to supplement the still-flowering remnants of snowdrops and crocus. Spring is here. Of all the plants of spring, my own favourite is one that barely gets a mention in most gardening and flower books – the spiky furze, or gorse.



We cultivate broom, its less dangerous cousin, which fits nicely into any sizeable country garden as well as colonizing wild areas, but you can be sure there would be vociferous objections from many in the family if you tried to introduce clumps of furze with its long branches covered in sharp-spined thorns. So the poor old furze tends to be an outcast, left on the edge of civilization, flourishing only in wild heathland, open grassy areas high up in hill country with only a few sheep and cattle for company. But what a magnificent display it provides at this time of year. As the road from Thurles to Nenagh climbs higher, the landscape from the Devil’s Bit across to the hills beyond Templederry is ablaze in a fiery yellow swathe as the furze flowers in its wild beauty.



It makes wonderful cover for wildlife. Canoeing on a lake one day, we enjoyed great views of a fleeing fox with hounds and huntsmen in close pursuit. Large patches of furze sprouted across the open moorland; the fox ducked into one for a few minutes’ rest, and then slipped unseen to the next while the dogs gathered on the perimeter of the first, apparently intimidated by the ferocity of the bristling spikes on the furze. For the best part of an hour the fox toyed with its pursuers, who could never quite pin down where it was hiding (we were not going to tell them) as it moved from cover to cover before eventually escaping to live another day.



Furze is a reminder of the natural wildness in the environment, helping us remember that our cultivated farms and gardens are all unnatural creations of the last few thousand years, and that the plants we grow for food and beauty are almost all bred by man from original species that slowly evolved over countless millennia.

Linnaeus the great Swedish naturalist visited Britain in the 1730’s and is supposed to have fallen on his knees and given thanks to God when he saw his first furze-covered common, so overcome was he by the sheer beauty of the scene.



So enjoy the furze, which will flower for most of the year and will give the bees an early source of pollen. If you make your own wine, gather its flowers and you will find it makes a wonderful, fragrant dry white. Use the plant to reconnect with untamed nature. Walk around Cabragh Wetlands and you will find a number of bushes; note that the flowers grow from leaf nodes and smell of cocnut. And you may enjoy putting that wonderful old saying to the test – “When furze is in blossom, kissing’s in season”.