The Burren is formed of rough, cracked limestone known as karst. The surface of the limestone is fractured into deep, narrow channels (grykes) a few inches wide but several feet long, with oblongs of rock (known as clints) of varying sizes islanded among them. However is does have sufficient soil to grow a wide variety of the most unusual and rarest of plants, many of them strange bedfellows. A fine collection of alpines and Mediterranean species grows together in this limestone area with, strangely, some of them being lime-hating plants.
