Scraghy ASSI

This area is of special scientific interest because of its species-rich wet grassland. Species-rich grassland tends to occur only where land management is not intensive, in particular where traditional farming practices have been maintained. As a result, it is not a widespread habitat in Northern Ireland and is often fragmented, consisting of individual fields, parts of fields or banks. Species-rich grasslands, like those found at Scraghy, are a particularly scarce resource in Northern Ireland.

Scraghy is situated on the foothills of Bin Mountain and Bolaght Mountain approximately 11km west of Drumquin. Scraghy is on the edge of the uplands with an altitude of approximately 200m above sea level. The area covers half of Crockalaghta hill and slopes quite steeply in places.

The site is underlain by Carboniferous age rocks, dominated by limestones belonging to the Ballyshannon Limestone Formation. These rocks formed in relatively shallow water and are base-rich having a significant calcium carbonate content. The soils at Scraghy are derived from the parent rock – the resultant soils have poor drainage characteristics and are known as surface water gleys. Due to a combination of factors such as slope, altitude and the westerly geographical position, these soils are kept consistently moist. This combination of underlying geology, topography and the related soil hydrology has resulted in a complex range of species-rich wet grasslands within a small area. These vary from species-rich rush pasture to fen meadow and wet heath, with base-loving plants present throughout the area.

The vegetation at Scraghy is dominated by wet grassland of the purple moor-grass and rush pastures type, with occasional pockets of flushed grassland and wet heath. Fen meadow is a particular type of purple moor-grass and rush pasture. It occurs on Scraghy where there is a steady hydrological influence in the soil and is typified by the occurrence of species adapted to both water movement and wetter conditions. Here, species such as meadow thistle and sharp-flowered rush are constant. Other distinctive species associated with fen meadow vegetation at Scraghy include purple moor-grass, tormentil, Devil’s-bit scabious, heather, bog pimpernel, selfheal, carnation sedge, tawny sedge,flea sedge and glaucous sedge. The predominant moss within the grassland is golden-head moss which is adapted to the unique conditions at Scraghy; other mosses present include glittering wood-moss, neat feather-moss and pointed spear-moss.

Pockets of very species-rich vegetation occur where the mineral soils and shallow peats are flushed and kept wet by base-rich or calcareous, nutrient-poor waters. These flushed areas often contain many distinctive species which include dioecious sedge, tawny sedge, fairy flax, lesser clubmoss, common cottongrass, purple moor-grass and the moss curled hook-moss. The same base-rich or calcareous waters that feed the flushes described above are sometimes channelled into soakaways where small pockets of species-rich wet heath occur. This wet heath generally occurs in mosaic with fen meadow and flushed grasslands and has similar vegetative characteristics, apart from a noticeably higher coverage of dwarf shrub species such as heather and cross-leaved heath.

The variation in topography and related soil hydrology, and the effects of past and present management have resulted in the presence of a wide range of plant species in a relatively small area. In addition to the vegetation communities described above the following species of note were recorded - lesser clubmoss and dioecious sedge.

Scraghy is an area of semi-natural grassland managed in a traditional way. As such, it provides valuable feeding and roosting sites for a range of animals, including birds and invertebrates.

Site Related Documents

Site map (.PDF 980Kb), Citation Document (.PDF 154Kb) and Views about Management document (.PDF 70Kb).

Scraghy Leaflet (.PDF (.PDF 900Kb)