The Irish Tree Alphabet

Indeed Ogham, the first alphabet of the Irish language, is known as the tree language. Each letter is named for a type of tree. Different combinations of slashes or ‘branches’ represent each letter on a vertical central stem, so words end up looking a bit like trees too! Hundreds of ogham inscriptions survive on stones dotted around the Irish landscape.

Lost Irish Trees

But our ancient ancestors would not recognise Ireland today. A combination of changing climate, the Plantations of Ireland, population growth, and industrialisation caused forest cover to drop from around 80% to a low of 1% in the 1800’s! With management, Irish forests are now close to 11%. But Ireland remains severely deforested. Particularly compared to the more than 30% forest cover of our neighbours in Europe, USA or Canada.

Trees on the Land

Trees on the Land is working to restore Ireland's lost woodland and tree cover by planting native trees in Ireland. Their annual tree planting event each February sees people across the island plant native Irish trees like alder, birch, blackthorn, crab apple, hawthorn, hazel, oak, scots pine and rowan.

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Comments

Linnie

Thank you for a lovely blog :) Your jewellery is beautiful. :)

I found you by chance when looking up Ailm as I am creating my own Tree Ogham.. Sadly, where I am in the subtropics many beautiful traditional Ogham trees can't grow.. Some that I met in a much too brief visit to Ireland I fell in love with, but they won't survive here .. Castleruddery Stone Circle was my favourite of all the stone circles we met in the northern hemisphere.. there was something so special there.. with Avebury and a couple of other also very beautiful and powerful circles moving me deeply, but I can't plant a beautiful Luis here.. it would not survive..

In the spirit of my Irish ancestors I, too, have a deep love of trees and have planted my own now self-seeding local species rainforest. Planting trees is one of the most beautiful and personal things we can do to honour this beautiful Earth.

Liz MaguireLinnie

Thank you, Linnie, for not only taking the time to read but to share your thoughts! It certainly sounds like you are very in touch with your natural side and have named a handful of beautiful species. It's wonderful to read that you are doing the important and much appreciated work of planting trees for future generations!