Connemara National Park

Two thousand hectares of mountain, bog, heath, grassland and forest in the northwest of Connemara, opened to the public in 1980 on land that was once part of the Kylemore Abbey estate. Western blanket bog and heathland dominate (bog in the wet low ground, blanket bog in the drier mountain air) with purple moorgrass the most abundant plant. Because bog holds so little nourishment, carnivorous plants matter here: sundew and butterwort take their energy from insects. A nineteenth-century graveyard and 4,000-year-old megalithic court tombs stand within the park.