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Plants Growing Amongst the Limestone Pavement – Photographic Print – Cook, Gary – Buy at AllPosters.com

Limestone pavement is a distinctive landform found in Sweden, France, Ireland, Wales, and in England around Cumbria and North Yorkshire. Its appearance is of a flat or rippled gray surface, broken into slabs (“clints”) by a multitude of intersecting cracks (“grykes”).

The formation of limestone pavement starts when a glacier scrapes away the earth, leaving bare limestone. Limestone is quite permeable and somewhat soluble, so the rain seeps away through the cracks which become enlarged.

The grykes (or grikes) make a series of protected pockets which provide a specialized niche which is host to a range of plants. It’s common to see herb robert, wood sorrel and dog-violet growing in the cracks, along with mosses, liverworts, and ferns such as Hart’s tongue and brittle bladder. You might also find wood melick, mountain avens, spiked speedwell, sheeps fescue, wood sorrell, maidenhair spleenwort, or thyme. Some plants are rare and found only on limestone pavement, including the rigid buckler fern and the baneberry. Lizards, birds, hare and stoat can also live in and around limestone pavement, along with insects, butterflies and moths attracted by the plant life. Where the grykes are deeper, stunted trees such as hawthorn and yew can become established.

Much of the limestone pavement has been dug out and sold for garden rockeries, but such use is nowadays prohibited in many areas, and frowned on elsewhere. The Royal Horticultural Society forbids the use of surface-stripped limestone pavement rock in its gardens, and does not permit its use in exhibits at its shows. Deep-quarried limestone can be artificially weathered to make an ecologically acceptable alternative for garden displays.

Some areas of limestone pavement are a result of human activity. About 2000 BC much of the tree cover was felled for crops and grazing. The effects of agriculture and grazing increased the erosion, exposing the raw limestone which was then further eroded. Presumably in a further 4000 years limestone pavement will have developed in areas where limestone quarries have been operating.

The pavements make an interesting place for a walk, although they become slippery when wet, and the grykes are sometimes hidden by vegetation so care is needed. In England, there are readily-accessible areas of limestone pavement near Hutton Roof, Malham Cove, Grange-over-sands and Silverdale (and also at the headland near Llandudno in Wales).