Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 2 mins.)

She’s been here a while now but has lost none of her beauty. She’s by no means fragile – very adaptable, in fact, like many of our own emigrants to other lands. She sounds kind of Japanese but isn’t, not at all.

It’s the fuchsia shrub, seen often in gardens but the hardy Fuchsia magellanica ‘Riccartonii’ variety grows naturalised in Ireland, especially along our west and south-west coasts where the soil tends to remain warmer than inland in winter.¹

The first of her kind to receive European classification was Fuchsia triphylla on Hispaniola (now Haiti and Dominican Republic), baptised by French friar and botanist Charles Plumiere in the late 1690s in honour of the German botanist and medical investigator, Leonhart Fuchs (1501-1566).

We tend to pronounce her name as “foo-shia”, which sounds Japanese (to me at any rate) but in keeping with the origin of the name perhaps we should be pronouncing it “fooch-sia”, with the “ch” pronounced as the Irish one, e.g in the word “loch”.

Giúise (g’yoo-sheh) is its Irish botanical name but it has also been popularly known as “Deora Dé” which translates as “God’s tears” but can also mean “Drops of God’s blood” (more appropriately when the flower has yet to open).

There are 110 varieties of the plant, not counting cultivars, of which there are many also. The natural varieties are nearly all native to South and Central America, with a few varieties in New Zealand² and Polynesia, testifying to the Silurian period connection between those landmasses.

In many parts of Latin America the flowers were pollinated by different species of hummingbirds but here in Ireland they do well enough with bees, both native and imported, to assist in their procreation.

The fruits are small and vary from sweetly edible to unpleasant to taste. As children we didn’t try the developed fruits but we did pluck the flower and chew the dark red part of the stem that becomes the fruit when the flower drops – and could often taste a faint sweetness.³

The fuchsia has been in Ireland a long enough time – since the early 19^th Century — and, though not native, is not generally referred to as “alien”, much less “invasive” to Ireland, unlike for example Cherry Laurel, Japanese Knotweed and a number of water plants such as Parrot’s Feather.

The Rhododendron and the Cotoneaster, which probably ‘escaped’ from gardens at the same time as the fuchsia, however do cause serious enough problems.

The naturalised South American migrant fuchsia brings bright colour wherever she grows for four months of the year, from June to October.

Fáilte roimpi – bienvenida!

end.

FOOTNOTES

1That favours rooted plant life so long as they can withstand the wind-chill factor and Atlantic gales.

2An exception to the bush/ shrub nature of the fuschia is one New Zealand species, the kōtukutuku (F. excorticata), which grows up to 12–15 m (39–49 ft) tall.

3I admit that I still often do that.

SOURCES

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuchsia

https://www.independent.ie/regionals/wicklow/lifestyle/fuchsia-a-not-so-fragile-beauty/34145375.html