Book review: The grass really is greener — one man’s tribute to a native Irish rainforest

EOGHAN DALTUN bought a small holding of 72 acres on the Beara Peninsula in Cork in 2009. What attracted him was the absence of farming and the abundance of native plants, including hazel, willow, birch, and holly. He was so overwhelmed by the fauna that he began a deep dive into ecology, in particular into woodland ecology.

“It was at this point, I realised that what I was looking at was not just wild, native forest, but a native Irish rainforest,” he says.

Rainforest is defined as an abundance of epiphytes. Epiphytes are plants that grow on other plants, primarily trees. They tend to be mosses and ferns, and sometimes flowering plants, but are characterised as having no roots, hence excluding other tree-climbing plants, like ivy.

Daltun’s discovery that the land he had purchased was a native rainforest, a temperate rainforest, created an urgency in him of Damascene proportions. He received a grant to fence off his land.

Daltun captured his thoughts first in An Atlantic Irish Rainforest; A Personal Journey into the magic of rewilding, in 2022, and this is followed up with The Magic of an Irish Rainforest: A Visual Journey, in 2024. The latter is very much a coffee-table book of exquisite photography, mostly taken by Daltun.

He opted for a visual second book to bring greater attention to the plight of the dwindling Irish rainforest.

While it took less than 10 years to rewild his land — now no longer grazed, due to fencing — there are few other examples of native Irish rainforest left in the country. According to Dalton, only 1% of Ireland is home to forests of any kind.

The success of the first book led him on a lecture tour across Ireland, where, armed with his trusty tripod, he recorded all surviving examples of native rainforest that he could find. The book also covers his own small holding, extensively recording examples of fauna and light across the year.

Daltun is harsh in his criticism of the Irish government and those departments charged with managing the Irish countryside, decrying the practice of monoculture planting of fast-growing trees that only values the lumber price, not the land itself.

He also criticises the management of the national parks, and, in particular, Killarney, which has been over-grazed by wild goats and deer, resulting in barren swathes of land colonised by rhododendron, which is also invasive.

The magic of his second book is its reliance on beautiful photography. At 200 pages, the book is a smorgasbord of greenness: photograph after photograph almost dripping in moisture. From powerful landscapes to close-up details of fragile epiphytes, the eye is drawn to the beauty. And it is as much about the rain, too — not just showers, but humidity, drizzle, fog, mist, and even sleet. The Irish rainforest needs moisture to survive.

This book is meant to seduce the reader, or watcher, rather than to heckle. To turn the pages is to wallow in the beauty: to become like Lot’s wife, letting the moss grow undisturbed.

“People didn’t know Ireland’s natural coverage is a temperate rainforest and reacted with surprise and curiosity to my first book,” Daltun says. “I am hoping my second, largely visual, book, can provoke further reaction and support.”

It is an easy read, divided into six sections: Water, light, space, time, connection, and rebirth. At the end of the book, I am persuaded, rather than cajoled, into becoming a paid-up member of the magic Irish rainforest club. I am also amazed at the ease of rebirth and I hope those who manage our public spaces will take note. 

I am sad at having to dislike those feral goats and Sika deer — and even the rhododendrons — but if a weed is a plant in the wrong place, so, too, the location of those invasive species is inimical to the regeneration of the Irish rainforest.