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Location: Near Lybster, Caithness, Scotland OS: ND 211450 What Three Word location:///graphic.duties.scuba
Habitat: Peat bog
We are thrilled that the Flow Country, where Munsary Peatlands resides, has been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site!
This marks a magnificent moment for Scottish wild plants, fungi and the wealth of wildlife they support.
“The Flow Country may be less well-known than the Great Barrier Reef, the Grand Canyon and the Pyramids but it is cause for great celebration that it today has achieved the same standing as those rightly revered places on Earth.” – Alistair Whyte, Head of Plantlife Scotland
Munsary is a vast undulating plain of peatland.
It is an incredibly important part of the famous Flow Country of Caithness and Sutherland, which as well as now being a World Heritage site, is also an Important Plant Area (IPA) and a designated Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI).
Munsary stores around 1.9 million tonnes of carbon locked up in the peat.
Read more about Munsary’s World Heritage status, here.
The reserve is made up of peat, which in places is up to 7 metres deep.
The blanket bog here is one of the most extensive peatlands left in Europe.
A special feature at Munsary is an unusual-looking area of dark-watered pools, high on a dome of peat, called dubh lochans. This area is particularly diverse, with pools of different shapes, sizes and depths, vegetated pools, and open water, ridges, and hummocks.
Even a visitor who has never studied mosses can spot differences between those forming the peat. Some form neat, rounded mounds, others are brownish or reddish tufts, while others make a deceptive green lawn, floating over water of an uncertain depth.
The drier areas of bog moss are home to many characteristic bog plants: Bog Asphodel, with spikes of yellow flowers, Common Cottongrass, with many white cottony heads in summer, and hare’s-tail cottongrass with just a single, fluffier head. Three species of heather grow here and plenty of sedges too, including such hard-to-find species as few-flowered sedge, flea sedge and bog-sedge.
Insect-eating plants lurk beside streams and wet pools: butterwort, with a basal rosette of broad, yellow-green leaves on which small insects stick, and round leaved and great sundew, with long red hairs on their leaves curving over to entrap their prey.
The reserve holds the largest population of Marsh Saxifrage in Scotland.
Take the A9 from Latherton north towards Thurso. After about 6 miles turn right at Achavanich towards Lybster. After a third of a mile, turn left on to the track alongside Loch Sternster, where there is a car park.
The Munsary walking trail with information posts is a long a three-mile track from the car park to the reserve itself.
Munsary Peatland Nature Reserve is open to visitors. However you should be aware that the terrain can be dangerous. There is a high risk of sinking in soft areas of the bog or being caught by rapidly changing weather.
It can be wild here, with occasional sleet storms even in June, and with fearsome midges when the wind isn’t blowing. And when you reach the peat after the three mile walk in, it is unfriendly underfoot, with the wettest parts like walking through a deep bowl of porridge.
To explore please use the Munsary Peatland Wildflower Walk Guide, and please let someone know you are going and when you are likely to be back.
View across Munsary
Grass of Parnassus at Munsary Peatlands
Marsh Saxifrage at Munsary Peatlands
This downloadable map and guide contains spring and summer plants.
24 Plantlife
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