Corvo's wild plants: the Nature Park, the crater bogs and the rare endemics

Corvo is 17 square kilometres of pasture, cliff and crater, and most visitors come for the view into the Caldeirão or for the birds. The plants are easy to miss. Yet the island holds more endemic plant species for its size than anywhere else in the Azores, and a few of them are among the rarest plants anywhere. This guide covers how the island is protected, what grows where, which rarities you will almost certainly not see, and how to look at the rest without harming it.

Three layers of protection overlap on Corvo. The Corvo Nature Park (Parque Natural do Corvo) was created by regional decree in December 2006 and takes in the Caldeirão, the cliffs and a block of sea around the island. In 2007 UNESCO made the whole island, with a large surrounding sea area, a Biosphere Reserve: 25,853 hectares in all, of which about 3,028 hectares form the strictly protected core. And the crater and the coast are a Natura 2000 site under EU law, covering about 41% of the island's land in the regional government's 2007 count.

None of this means a fenced reserve. Cows graze inside the crater, and the municipality presents the island's traditional, mostly pastoral farming as part of what the Biosphere Reserve protects. According to the same 2007 count, about 57% of the pastures are managed by the community rather than by individual owners.

Corvo was once covered in laurel forest and Azorean cedar, the short-leaved juniper Juniperus brevifolia. Early settlers cut the forest for timber, mainly the cedar, and later cleared the slopes for pasture, so most of the forest is gone. What is left survives where cows and people could not easily reach: the steep inner walls of the crater, the wet ground on its floor, a few stream gullies on the eastern slope, and the sea cliffs, which rise more than 100 metres along most of the coast.

The regional government's 2007 dossier for the Biosphere Reserve counts more than 90 endemic plant taxa on the island, the highest share of endemics of any Azorean island. Nineteen species are on the EU Habitats Directive's list of plants that need protected sites. Eight are bryophytes, mosses and their relatives, on the European Red List, among them the moss Echinodium renauldii, which the dossier describes as one of the most threatened in the world.

The Caldeirão is up to 300 metres deep, and its floor holds lakes, small islands and a spread of bog. Four EU priority habitats occur on Corvo: Macaronesian endemic heath, active raised bog, blanket bog and bog woodland. On the crater floor that means Sphagnum peat moss, rushes and sedges. Azorean cedar, Azorean blueberry (Vaccinium cylindraceum) and heather are among the shrubs the dossier lists for these habitats.

Sphagnum holds water like a sponge and is easily crushed. If you walk the PRC02COR loop inside the crater, stay on the marked line even where it turns to mud: stepping round a puddle onto the moss damages it more than wet boots do. Our Caldeirão guide covers the trail, the fog and getting to the rim.

The best place to see native shrubs at close range is the PR01COR trail from the crater rim to the village. On part of the descent the path runs between Azorean heather (Erica azorica) and cedar, both endemic to the Azores, before it reaches the stone-walled pastures above the village. The Cara do Índio walk guide has the distances and the route.

The coastal cliffs carry their own plant community, listed in the dossier as dominated by the endemic grass Festuca petraea, with Azorina vidalii (a pink-flowered bellflower found only in the Azores), the Azorean spurge Euphorbia azorica, the Azorean carrot Daucus azoricus, heather and sea campion. Much of this grows where no one can reach it, which is why it survived.

Two of the island's plants came close to vanishing. The Azores forget-me-not, Myosotis azorica, a small plant with deep blue flowers, was described by the British botanist H. C. Watson in 1842 and grows only on Flores and Corvo, between about 400 and 600 metres. It is classed as Vulnerable by the IUCN and protected by regional law. In 2012 only five plants were known on Corvo, on a cliff that a landslide later destroyed, and the species was feared lost. In August 2014 a team from SPEA, the Portuguese bird conservation society, and the Technical University of Munich found about 50 flowering plants on Corvo's coastal cliffs.

The speedwell Veronica dabneyi, another Azorean endemic, had not been collected since 1938 until botanists found it again on Flores and rediscovered it on Corvo, as they reported in 2002.

You will not see either on a normal visit, and you should not go looking for them on the cliffs. They are the reason the protected zones and the marked paths exist.

The same habitats hold animals found almost nowhere else. The dossier names Hipparchia occidentalis, a brown butterfly endemic to the Azores that lives only on Corvo and Flores. The IUCN lists it as Endangered, but the dossier describes its Corvo population as abundant, so you may well see one on the grassy slopes. For the seabirds and the October migrants, see our birdwatching guide.

The Corvo Wild Birds Interpretation Centre in Vila do Corvo is the Nature Park's visitor centre. Its exhibition is mainly about birds, but it also introduces the Nature Park and the Biosphere Reserve, and a virtual-reality tour takes you round the island. The building also holds Corvo's last mill, used until the early 1960s. In 2026 it opens Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 12:30 and 13:30 to 17:00. It is a good place to start if you arrive on a weekday and the crater is in cloud.

• Stay on marked trails in the crater and on the cliffs.
• Do not pick plants or take moss, even small pieces.
• Close every gate behind you: the pastures are working farmland.
• Keep away from cliff edges. The plants that matter grow on faces you cannot see from the top, and the cliffs drop more than 100 metres.

Is all of Corvo a protected area? The whole island and a large area of sea around it form a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, created in 2007. The strictest protection, the Nature Park and the Natura 2000 site, covers the Caldeirão, the cliffs and the coast. The village and the farmland are part of the reserve but are lived in and farmed.

Where can I see native plants on Corvo? On the floor and inner walls of the Caldeirão, on the PRC02COR loop, and on part of the PR01COR trail down to the village, where Azorean heather and cedar grow beside the path.

Can I see the Azores forget-me-not? Almost certainly not. It grows only on Flores and Corvo, mostly on inaccessible cliffs, and only about 50 flowering plants were found on Corvo in 2014.

Is the interpretation centre open at weekends? No. In 2026 it opens Monday to Friday only, 09:00 to 12:30 and 13:30 to 17:00. Plan a weekday visit if you want to see it.