Plants are essential to everyone's lives. Welcome to Plantlife.

Plant & fungi species

Exquisite, wildly varied and often surprising, plants and fungi are the essential fabric of our countryside upon which all other wildlife depends.

Have a browse through the list below to find out more about some of Scotland’s wild plants and fungi. Please be aware that this is a work in progress and currently contains only a small selection of our full floral heritage. Over time we aim to keep adding to it until we build a complete database.

To download a list of species we’re actively engaged in conserving in Scotland, please click here.

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Species in Scotland

Alpine blue-sow-thistle

A handsome plant with tall rough stems and heads of large blue ...
Alpine catchfly

A small but hardy plant that produces tufty pink flowers in spring. Its ...
Alpine gentian

This sweet 'gentian of the snows' is among the botanical gems of Ben Lawers, ...
Bearberry

A trailing shrub, it has black berries and delicately-veined leaves that ...
Chickweed wintergreen

Also known as the 'Arctic starflower', chickweed wintergreen is one of the ...
Common butterwort

The striking triangular leaves, with their rolled edges, appear in a star ...
Dark-red helleborine

This rare and beautiful wild orchid forms a splash of deep-red colour on ...
Hebridean spotted-orchid

This plant is believed to be a low-growing form of the much more widespread ...
Irish lady’s-tresses

This beautiful small wild orchid has small creamy-white flowers coiling in ...
Juniper

A prickly shrub in the Cypress family with short spiky leaves. Juniper ...
One-flowered wintergreen

This delightful plant used to be called St Olaf’s Candlestick. It has ...
Pillwort

This tiny plant is a type of creeping fern. It is hard to spot because it ...
Scottish dock

A giant among docks. The towering russet spires of Scottish dock are ...
Scottish primrose

The ultimate northerner in our flora, Scots Primrose grows on coastal ...
Sealoch egg-wrack

A distinctive golden seaweed. Sealoch egg wrack is unusual in that it ...
Shetland mouse-ear

An attractive sight against the dark background of loose rocks near the sea. ...
Thrift

An outstanding beauty of the coast. This perky pink perennial has a ...
Tree lungwort

A beautiful, vibrantly green, leafy lichen. Its lobes look a bit like the ...
Twinflower

This beautiful plant has two pink bell-like flowers on a slender stem, and a ...
Young’s helleborine

A wild orchid with small, pink and green flowers and oval leaves. ...