Platanthera bifolia
The first time I saw this orchid was in South Connemara when I went to take my niece on a day out from Irish College. We went to the beautiful Coral Beach (Trá an Dóilín) near Carraroe and I was rewarded with an amazing selection of wild flowers growing on the sandy machair grassland in between the massive rocks which litter the South Connemara landscape. Today I found one in my own garden, in part of the lawn that we have allowed to grow and go wild.
This bright pink flower seeded itself in the gravel around our house in Connemara Co Galway. Its small flowers are a vivid pink with yellow centres, but they only open when the sun shines. Luckily we’ve had plenty of sunshine this summer. I have also seen Common Centaury growing on the grassy sand-dunes behind some of our Connemara beaches.
I went to the South Connemara Gaeltacht last week, for the annual MacDara’s Island pilgrimage. We went further south, across a series of bridges, to the remote Mweenish Island, which has a spectacular example of machair habitat. Machair is a sandy grassland, found only on the exposed coasts of the western seaboard of Ireland and Scotland. It is formed when calcareous sand is blown inland and depends on low-input traditional farming practices to maintain its biodiversity.
The machair on Mweenish island is home to a wonderful array of wild flowers, the most spectacular of which is the pyramidal orchid, which is dotted all over the dunes in large numbers.
The Harebell is a delicate, blue, bell-shaped flower which grows on the sandy coastal meadows around Connemara. I photographed these in Finish Island, an uninhabited tidal Island in South Connemara, which can be reached on foot only when the tide is exceptionally low. I have also seen large numbers of Harebells at Fountainhill, near Claddaghduff and on the spectacular machair on Mweenish Island.
This pretty yellow flower grows abundantly in the dunes adjacent to Connemara’s beaches. I have photographed it at the Coral beach near Carraroe, and at Fountainhill near Claddaghduff, as well as in the Connemara National Park. All of the bedstraws (most of which are white), have a pleasant smell like newly-mown hay, and were once used to stuff mattresses. Legend has it that Lady’s bedstraw was used in the mattress of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem, which is how it got its name as well as its colour!