Wallflowers and rock dwellers

Limestone cliffs with crevice vegetation

This habitat type comprises dry to moist limestone cliffs and steep limestone faces with their crevice vegetation at all altitudes. The sites consist of fissured or banked limestone areas where a minimal amount of fine soil in the crevices allows plant growth. The vegetation is predominantly free of woody plants, mostly patchy and consists mainly of small ferns and low-growing cushion plants, as well as some grasses and, in places, numerous mosses. Small fern species such as wall rue, hart’s-tongue, black-stemmed and green-striped ferns, as well as alpine and fragile bladder ferns. Lime rock cinquefoil and Clusius cinquefoil are also conspicuous and common.