Ireland: The Burren National Park (Revisited)

If you are a botanist at heart, the Burren National Park is the reason to visit Ireland. While it is the smallest park in Ireland, it’s desolate karst landscape is both starkly beautiful and geologically important. The hilly area is covered with limestone cracks and plateaus and represents some of the oldest land on earth that used to be at the bottom of the see over 325 million years ago. The landscape consists of endless hard limestone in a checkered patterns of clints (flat platforms) and grikes (deep cuts and cracks). The latter are sheltered from cold Atlantic winds and act like small greenhouses that are responsible for the surreal flora variety. In fact, the Burren is world-famous for its unique flora – many of the spring and early summer wildflowers are only found here and nowhere else in the world, while others grow way outside of their more southern habitats. Many species of spectacular orchids can be found in the Burren