Common sea-lavender can be found around our coasts on mudflats, creek banks and saltmarshes. Despite its name, its not a lavender at all, so doesn’t smell like one.

Horseshoe vetch is a member of the pea family, so displays bright yellow, pea-like flowers and seed pods. Look for this low-growing plant on chalk grasslands from May to July.

The common shieldbug was once restricted to Southern England, but has since been moving northwards and is now quite widespread. It can be found in all kinds of habitats from gardens to farms.

Eyebright has small, white flowers with purple veins and yellow centres. It likes short grasslands, from clifftops to heaths, and is one of a number of species and hybrids that are hard to tell…

As its name suggests, giant hogweed it a large umbellifer with distinctively ridged, hollow stems. An introduced species, it is an invasive weed of riverbanks, where it prevents native species…

Our most familiar fern, bracken can be found growing in dense stands on hillsides, moorland, heathland and in woodlands. It is very large and dies back in winter, turning the landscape orangey-…

Forming mats of straight, bright green stems, Common spike-rush does, indeed, look like lots of tightly clustered 'spikes' near the water's edge of our wetland habitats.

The angle shades can be well-hidden among the leaf litter - its pinky-brown markings and scalloped wings giving it the perfect camouflage. It is on the wing in gardens, woods and hedgerows from…

The black-tailed godwit is a rare breeding bird in the UK that has suffered from dramatic declines. It can most easily be spotted around the coast in winter and at inland wetlands when on…

The Black-tailed skimmer is a narrow-bodied dragonfly that can be seen flying low over the bare gravel and mud around flooded gravel pits and reservoirs. It is on the wing from May to August.

The bulbous buttercup has the familiar butter-yellow flowers of its namesake, but grows from a bulb-like 'corm' (a swollen underground stem). Look for it on chalk and limestone…