I'm working with University College Dublin on this, and have looked into the National Folklore Archive. It's an amazing record, and almost too dense to really make headway into.

But I'm also lucky that someone else did the hard work, and long before digitisation of the collection. The amazing book 'Furze' by AT Lucas is a gift – an 8-year research project done in the 1950s and published in 1960, where Lucas sought any entry over the past 500 years about the plant.

One interesting point that Lucas made is that aiteann was used in communal ovens and houses for its high burn point. It was also temporary hedging, so it was considered an important cash crop. Land with the plant was high value.

Today, it's seen as a pest on 'good' land, and a fire risk. The change happened around the mid 19th Century, when coal began to be imported into and mined in Ireland, a techno-social shift that gave the plant freedom to roam and grow unheeded.

Thinking about aiteannn (gorse) as historically a cash crop changed the way I perceived it as a cultural and heritage object.

It made me start to wonder if some day a cash crop like sitka spruce will be a cultural or heritage object in Ireland, with myth and tradition associated with the plant.

So I started creating a cultural heritage, drawing sitka spruce with charcoal made from sitka spruce branches.

#art

The relationship between the two plants and fire is also very interesting. Their loose 'self seeded' plants grow all over the Irish countryside and often grown next to one another. Wildfires spread from aiteann (gorse) and heather onto sitka spruce forestry quite easily, making it a big issue for fire management.

With climate change, drier weeks and warmer summers mean wildfires become a bigger risk. And here we have two crops that have become weeds, spreading wild and burning together.

#art

@yetiinabox I have thought about it. A friend actually made a scent from it before for an artwork. I might ask her for tips.

We also have two species in Ireland that flower at different times of year. One smells distinctly of coconut, the other more like peach. Both are lovely.