Iceland: Icelandic Wildflowers

For many people, Iceland conjures images of inhospitable land of fire and ice, with black lava everywhere and snow covering every hilltop. But come here in summer and you can see carpets of wildflowers of great variety. The flowering season is rather short, but there is plenty (22 hours a day) of sunshine in summer (on the few days that are actually sunny). Arctic thyme, meadow buttercups, mountain avens, Alaskan lupine, moss campion, harebell l, and many more species cover slopes, mountainsides, green open spaces, and steep sides of fjords. Also, we found about half a dozen species of spectacular northern orchids with flowers from snap white to green to purple with bright red.