Vegetation and Natural Resources
Glendalough is surrounded by semi-natural oak woodland. Much of this was formerly coppiced (cut to the base at regular intervals) to produce wood, charcoal and bark. In the springtime, the oakwood floor is carpeted with a display of bluebells, wood sorrel and wood anemones. Other common plants are woodrush, bracken, polypody fern and various species of mosses. The understorey is largely of holly, hazel and mountain ash.
At the west end of the Upper Lake lie the ruins of an abandoned miners' village normally accessible only by foot. The mining of lead took place here from 1850 until about 1957 but the mines in the valley of Glendalough were smaller and less important than those around the Glendasan Valley, from which they are separated by Camaderry Mountain. In 1859 the Glendasan and Glendalough mines were connected with each other by a series of adits, now flooded, through the mountain. This made it easier to transport ore from Glendalough and process it there.
Read more about this topic: Glendalough
Famous quotes containing the words vegetation, natural and/or resources:
“We love to see any redness in the vegetation of the temperate zone. It is the color of colors. This plant speaks to our blood.... What a perfect maturity it arrives at! It is the emblem of a successful life concluded by a death not premature, which is an ornament to Nature. What if we were to mature as perfectly, root and branch, glowing in the midst of our decay, like the poke!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The idea that seeing life means going from place to place and doing a great variety of obvious things is an illusion natural to dull minds.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)
“When we want culture more than potatoes, and illumination more than sugar-plums, then the great resources of a world are taxed and drawn out, and the result, or staple production, is, not slaves, nor operatives, but men,—those rare fruits called heroes, saints, poets, philosophers, and redeemers.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)