The far west of County Cork is a land shrouded in rain and mist. It is a land where links with the past are still very much alive, through stories, music and ruins. It is also a land where ancient cryptogams thrive. The name cryptogam combines the modern words cryptic (hidden) and gamete (reproduction). Cryptogams are a group of plants and seaweeds which, unlike ‘modern’ plants, produce neither flowers nor seeds. Rather, reproduction is a hidden, invisible affair whereby tiny, freeswimming sperm move from plant to plant to achieve fertilisation. This is not unlike the reproduction of the plants’ ancestors, green algae, which lived millions of years ago in the seas and oceans. Indeed, cryptogams such as mosses and ferns can only reproduce in damp areas. The ‘primitive’ lifestyle of cryptogams connects us directly with a far past, some 500 million years ago, when plants first colonised land. The emergence of the first plants on land, cryptogam mosses, had massive repercussions: changing a dusty, grey-brown world into a rich, green one which, much, much later saw the appearance of amazing creatures such as dinosaurs (some 250 million years ago) andultimately humans (some 300,000 years ago).

Glenkeen Garden is located on the shore of Roaringwater Bay, an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean. The lush lands are wet (more than a metre of rain per year), and cryptogams thrive, ranging from tiny, native liverworts to massive Australian tree-ferns. These cryptogams freely colonise bare rocks, walls, roofs, tree trunks, and any other object, just as their ancestors would have done millions of years ago. Many cryptogams are small, but en masse, and over thousands of years they have formed one of the most characteristic of Irish landscapes, the Irish peatland bog. That, incidentally, is what links this historic group of humble plants to some of the biggest challenges facing planet Earth in the twenty-first century: climate change. Peat bogs store enormous amounts of carbon and are a vital component of a healthy planet Earth. Thus, cryptogams link a far past to a healthy future, and their survival of extreme events such as mass extinctions, ice ages, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes is staggering. This multidimensional perspective of cryptogams is on the one hand awe-inspiring, but on the other hand largely overlooked by scientists and artists alike (in that sense, the term ‘crypto’ appears to have multiple dimensions).

Stepping into this void is Markus Huemer. Upon arrival at Glenkeen, he was inspired by the many cryptogams, ranging from seaweeds washed ashore at the bottom of the garden to mosses and ferns deeper in the garden, including the epiphytic growth of algae and mosses on tree trunks. Inspiration by cryptogams is inspiration by an invisible world – one without the distraction of colourful petals and sensual fragrances. It is a quieter, older world that returns to the essence of what life is and the core relationships between the environment and ourselves. Markus has effectively captured these relationships in a series of twenty-two paintings by using of digital tools, a limited range of colours, bold lines, and by setting plant parts within a wider context. Remarkably, Markus picked up on the analogies between cryptogams and cryptocurrencies: their shared (in)visibility. While one can seriously question whether cryptocurrencies will last as long as cryptogams, the shared emphasis on the ‘hidden’, in a society that preaches openness and transparency, remains an inspirational, puzzling, as well as possibly a troubling perspective.

Prof. Marcel Jansen