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ANOTHER LIFE:NOW THAT autumn seems bent on sliding seamlessly into spring, it can take half the winter for some plants to slow down. My morning trips to the raingauge wear a deepening trail in the grass. But most wayside plants, I am pleased to see, are still crumpling on seasonal cue, retiring to rest in root-buds, rhizomes, belly-button rosettes.

Everything gloriously blossoms again, however, in two new books among the Christmas offerings, both of them county floras with appeal and importance far beyond their borders. John Feehan’s The Wildflowers of Offaly (Offaly County Council, €40) and Tony O’Mahony’s Wildflowers of Cork City and County (Collins Press, €29.99) are weighty, handsome hardbacks, funded jointly by their local authorities and the Heritage Council – an uplifting enterprise, given the times.