Machair

[anteros_lmc]

I mentioned to aletheiafelinea that I'd been trying, rather unsuccessfully, to take more pictures of flower meadows while I was on holiday and promised to post them, so here they are! This is the machair, a unique coastal land form found only in the north west of Scotland, and most commonly in the Outer Hebrides. The machair is a low lying fertile grassland between coastal sand dunes and inland moor formed by windblown shell sand overlain by thin soils*. In the summer months the machair is awash with wild flowers and it used to be said that sailors approaching the Hebrides from the west could smell the machair long before the islands came into view. Early in the season the white and yellow flowers dominate (daisy, bedstraw, yellow vetches), followed by pinks and purples (wild thyme, clover, orchids) and finally the glorious blues (harebell, scabious, self heal, blue vetch). These pictures are of the machair behind Traigh na Berie. I've been coming here since I was a kid and have been trying to photograph it for over thirty years, but not a single picture I've ever taken does it justice. Of course having a proper camera rather than a decrepit old iphone might help :}








Traigh na Berie



Lots and lots and lots of flowers!




Harebell and bedstraw



Clover and Hebridean spotted orchid




Hebridean spotted orchid



Lesser butterfly orchid and Hebridean spotted orchid

* Many moons ago I studied the machair as part of both my higher geography dissertation and my archaeology masters thesis. Can you tell? :}