The Lusitanian flora is a small assemblage of plants that show a restricted and specific distribution in that they are mostly only to be found in the Iberian Peninsula or southwest Ireland.
Many of the species are also very restricted in their distribution in Ireland, and have become the centre of intense conservation efforts in recent years, for example the Irish Fleabane.
[citation needed] Today it is often stated that these species are native to Ireland [3] and it has been proposed that they probably survived the last ice age in refuges, for instance work on St Dabeoc's Heath.
[4] However, Micheline Sheehy Skeffington and co-workers have assembled evidence indicating that several of the Lusitanian plant species were introduced by people traveling by sea from northern Spain.
Her initial publications on Mackay's Heath (Erica mackayana) suggest this species was introduced to the west coast of Ireland as several discreet colonies in remote locations through smuggling.