Sea of flowers


‘Machair’. The Gaelic word has a throat-clearing sound in the core of it. But the real thing, where a grassy plain stretches inland from an Atlantic-facing beach, can be soft as a summer breeze. Quite simply, there’s nowhere finer in the whole of Britain and Ireland to enjoy flower-rich pastures and the birds and insects linked to them. Generations of low-intensity farming on the machair along parts of the Scottish west coast and in the Hebrides have produced land that is a boon for plants and wildlife. Machair’s fertility comes from windblown shell sand. Its enduring quality comes from traditional grazing by crofters’


livestock in autumn and winter, which allows many plants to bloom and set seed in spring and summer. The result can be blends of daisies, buttercups, cranesbills, meadow rue, eyebrights, orchids and more that stretch for hundreds of metres. Bees – including the scarce great yellow bumblebee – love machair – as do wading birds such as dunlin, redshank and oystercatcher. See it, hear it, inhale it: machair could be another word for ‘magnificent’.


Web tip: www.snh.org.uk/pdfs/publications/ livinglandscapes/machair.pdf


10


The Nature of Scotland


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