Feast of flowers at Five Mile Point

What's the highpoint of your wildflower year? For many of us, it's forest flowers in spring. Or a meadow in late May. But what about a shingle strand in July? I was amazed by the abundance of individual plants, and of species, on either side of the railway line between Five Mile Point and Blackditch on the Wicklow Coast last weekend. In this shot alone, sea holly, wild carrot, sandwort, sea spurge, and sea sandwort feature. This is a wonderful place to walk, and inspired Seamus Heaney's luminous poem in Seeing Things, the one that opens:
"One afternoon I was seraph on gold leaf.
I stood on railway sleepers hearing larks,
Grasshoppers, cukoos, dogbarks, trainer planes
Cutting and modulating and drawing off...
On either side, dog daisies stood like vestals..."
Photo: Paddy Woodworth