Plants That Live Outside the Ocean Where Puffins Live

Tree Mallow

• Tree mallow, known in Latin as Lavatera arborea, is an invasive plant growing on the island of Craigleith, Scotland. The island is the nesting ground of one of the world's largest puffin colonies. Tree mallow was introduced to the island by lighthouse keepers and sheep farmers in the 1700s as a medicinal plant. Scots used the leaves as natural bandages. The plant was consistently thinned out by wild rabbits and long Scottish winters until 1999. Subsequent winters were increasingly mild, and a disease killed off a massive number of the wild rabbits. Tree mallow began to spread, pushing out native plant species along the islands and coast, blocking entrance to the puffins' nests. This problematic plant has led to a decrease in puffin breeding pairs on Craigleith from 29,000 in 1999 to less than 3,000 in 2007.

Scottish Primrose

• Scottish primrose is a native plant that grows along the coast of the Orkney Islands. The islands' coastal heaths serve as an important nesting ground for puffins. The plants, known in Latin as Primula scotica, thrive in North Hill, Rousay, Stromness heaths and coast and West Westray. The Orkney Islands Council lists all four areas as sites of specific scientific interest containing rare and notable flora and fauna communities. Scottish primrose grows in full sun to part shade and blooms in clusters of yellow-centered purple flowers with a diameter of 1/3 inch. You can find the plants growing in puffin habitat on coastal cliffs in grazed, natural grasslands. The Scotsman reports that botanists consider the flower one of the most rare and attractive in the world.

Scentless Mayweed

• Sule Skerry is an island that lies about 38 miles west of the Orkney mainland. The island supports 58,000 puffin pairs during the breeding season. Sule Skerry is covered in scentless mayweed throughout the warm summer months. The plants thrive in the same peat-heavy soil that puffins use for burrows. Scentless mayweed, or Tripleurospermum inodorum, produces flat, daisylike blossoms with white petals and a yellow center from June through October. This U.K. native grows in sprawling bunches low to the ground in areas of full sun. Gardeners and farmers consider the plant a weed, while science has found pharmaceutical uses for an antiviral agent in the sap used to fight polio and herpes.