“Tis a beautiful land, the land of the machair, the land of the smiling coloured flowers”
John MacCodrum, 1750
On the west coast of Harris in the remote Outer Hebrides, lies the vast, impressive Luskentyre sandflats and beach across which a tidal channel meanders its way to the sea. But this is no ordinary sandy inlet.
The vegetated, pointed spit of low land to the right and the area of sand dunes to the left are known as ‘Machair’, a low lying sandy plain that owes its fertility to a high level of seashells. It is one of the rarest habitats in Europe, and the Outer Hebrides is home to about half of all the Machair in Scotland.
Machair
At the end of the last Ice Age rising sea levels pushed forwards sand and shells creating large sandy plains butting up against the ancient ice-worn rocks. Some of the sands have since been whipped up by the wind into low dunes; others were formed by the waves and currents into spits.
These mild, wet and windswept areas have been colonised by plants to form something like a sand dune pasture (machair) that contains rare flowers including orchids and Yellow Rattle. It is a favourite breeding ground for many wading birds, including rare species like the corncrake.
Gaelic Heritage
The Outer Hebrides belonged to the Norse Kingdom until 1266, when it became part of Scotland. To this day it retains a strong Gaelic heritage. In the Western Isles, the Gaelic language is spoken by almost three quarters of the population, much more than in any other part of Scotland.
The Gaelic language can be traced in many Scottish place names. ‘Eilean’ is the Gaelic for island, ‘Glas’ (as in Glasgow) translates as a green place and ‘Dun’ or ‘Din’ found in Dundee and Edinburgh denotes a fort
