Go to Firestone Copse in the spring to enjoy the spring flowers including Wild Daffodil, Common Spotted Orchid, Wild Service Tree and the strikingly blue Narrow-leaved Lungwort. St Helen's Duver is a superb site for sand dune plants. Many of them, the sand-dune grasses and clovers, are quite tiny and need to be enjoyed on your hands and knees! Sea Bindweed and Sea Sandwort are 'showier' and in August and September the grassland is studded with the blue flowers of Autumn Squill. At Freshwater Bay you should be able to see Rock Samphire, a herb which intrepid locals used to collect by the sack full when they descended the cliffs on ropes. If you walk from here eastwards onto Afton Down you will come across Sea Cabbage, Hoary Stock, Sea Pink, Pyramidal Orchid and, in a good year, the diminutive Early Gentian. In the late summer, some of the salt marshes in the creeks and estuaries of the north side of the Island are awash with the purple of Sea Lavender, and later on, the first frosts bring with it the Glassworts and Sea-blite which can turn a startling shade of red. Page 2 of 2 : Previous | View Other Species |
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