Carrack Gladden is a coastal headland in St Ives Bay

St Ives Bay

St Ives Bay is a bay on the Atlantic coast of north-west Cornwall in the United Kingdom. It is in the form of a shallow crescent, some 4 miles or 6 km across, between St Ives in the west and Godrevy Head in the east....

 just north of the Hayle Estuary

Hayle Estuary

The Hayle Estuary is an estuary in west Cornwall, United Kingdom.The estuary of the River Hayle consists of a main channel, with several other nearby tidal areas, including Lelant Saltings, Copperhouse Creek and Carnsew Pool ....

 between Hayle

Hayle

Hayle is a small town, civil parish and cargo port in west Cornwall, United Kingdom. It is situated at the mouth of the Hayle River and is approximately seven miles northeast of Penzance...

 and St Ives, Cornwall

St Ives, Cornwall

St Ives is a seaside town, civil parish and port in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The town lies north of Penzance and west of Camborne on the coast of the Celtic Sea. In former times it was commercially dependent on fishing. The decline in fishing, however, caused a shift in commercial...

.

The cliffs between Carrack Gladden headland and Hawks Point to the east are of metamorphosed Devonian

Devonian

The Devonian is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic Era spanning from the end of the Silurian Period, about 416.0 ± 2.8 Mya , to the beginning of the Carboniferous Period, about 359.2 ± 2.5 Mya...

 slate

Slate

Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. The result is a foliated rock in which the foliation may not correspond to the original sedimentary layering...

s and rise to 60 metres high.

The acidic soils exhibit a range of vegetation types including maritime heathland, grassland

Grassland

Grasslands are areas where the vegetation is dominated by grasses and other herbaceous plants . However, sedge and rush families can also be found. Grasslands occur naturally on all continents except Antarctica...

 and scrub. The heath and grassland habitats at the headland itself support the nationally scarce Soft-leaved Sedge Carex montana. On the steep, wet cliffs to the east, two other nationally scarce plant species Ivy Broomrape Orobanche hederae and Maidenhair Fern

Adiantum capillus-veneris

Adiantum capillus-veneris, the Southern maidenhair fern, black maidenhair fern, and venus hair fern, is a species of fern in the genus Adiantum with a subcosmopolitan worldwide distribution...

 Adiantum capillus-veneris are found.

The site has been included by English Nature

English Nature

English Nature was the United Kingdom government agency that promoted the conservation of wildlife, geology and wild places throughout England between 1990 and 2006...

 within a Site of Special Scientific Interest

Site of Special Scientific Interest

A Site of Special Scientific Interest is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom. SSSIs are the basic building block of site-based nature conservation legislation and most other legal nature/geological conservation designations in Great Britain are based upon...

 called the Hayle Estuary and Carrack Gladden SSSI

Hayle Estuary and Carrack Gladden SSSI

The Hayle Estuary and Carrack Gladden SSSI is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, noted for its biological interest, in Cornwall, England, UK.It consists of three distinct parts, each of which is covered in a separate article:* the Hayle Estuary...

in recognition of its biodiversity conservation importance.