2022 County Report for East Donegal

Oisín and Mairéad Duffy

East Donegal (H34) – County Roundup 2022

Oisín and Mairéad Duffy

During 2022, we were lucky enough to finally run a field-outing, which had been planned for 2020 and 2021, but cancelled due to various circumstances relating to Covid-19. Our meeting took place in Murvagh, in the south of the vice-county. The site is one of the better known and covered areas and has a host of interesting plants, making it an ideal location for starting back with field-outings and recording.

Seven of us set out on the seventh of August to record in the area, but with our sights focused on some rarer species, particularly Pyrola rotundifolia ssp. maritima and Monotropa hypopitys. Luckily on this occasion both of these species were easy to find, which was a relief as the Monotropa in particular appears to have Houdini like abilities to evade recording in previous years.

These finds and this field-outing are our main highlights for this particular year as free time was significantly shortened with the arrival of our first child. This coupled with a 400km distance between where we’re living and where we record does make current recording opportunities difficult to achieve. However, after a few years we’ll hopefully have an interested next generation botanist on our hand, so that may get us back on track recording wise!