Derryvree’s Bogbean Season
Archived: 17 September 2026
Around 31,435 BCE, Ireland lay within the variable Midlandian cold stage, not a precisely reconstructable single year. Derryvree, County Fermanagh, preserves freshwater organic sediments between glacial tills, radiocarbon-dated broadly to 36,900–31,700 cal BP. Its bogbean, sedges, mosses and aquatic plants indicate treeless wet tundra with seasonal liquid water, rather than permanent ice or temperate woodland. Comparable deposits show changing local climates and ice limits. Cave fauna demonstrate that reindeer, mammoth, giant deer and predators occurred during overlapping Late Pleistocene phases, but not necessarily together. No securely dated human activity exists. Later ice expansion buried Derryvree and erased many older landscapes.