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Skelmorlie is a linear coastal village strung along the rocky shore at the southern extremity of Inverclyde, where the Firth of Clyde narrows toward the Great Cumbrae island. The village is built on a series of terraces cut into the steep hillside, its Victorian and Edwardian villas descending in tiers to the seafront promenade. The wooded hillside carries sycamore, ash and birch before giving way to heather and gorse moorland above; the shoreline path south to Largs passes through coastal scrub with rosehips and sea buckthorn. The Skelmorlie Water runs north of the village through a narrow glen with hawthorn and alder on the banks.

Sycamore is the dominant May flow tree throughout Inverclyde, lining the Victorian and Edwardian streets of Greenock and Port Glasgow and covering the steeper hillsides above the town in semi-natural woodland. White clover on the amenity grasslands, parks and road verges of the coastal towns is the main mid-summer crop from June through August. Hawthorn on the hedgerows of the agricultural land between Kilmacolm and Inverkip provides a strong May blossom flow. The Renfrewshire Heights above Greenock and Inverkip carry extensive heather moorland from mid-July through September — one of the most accessible upland heather grounds from the Glasgow conurbation, and a traditional destination for beekeepers moving colonies in late July. Himalayan balsam is establishing on the Kip Water and Gryfe corridors. Bramble on old quarry and railway embankment sites around Greenock provides a useful late-summer supplement. Gorse and broom on the hillside rough grazing above the coastal towns provides a sustained spring flow from April. Ivy on the older stone buildings and Victorian tenements closes the calendar in October.