The all-black rook is a sociable bird, so can be spotted in flocks or nesting colonies, known as 'rookeries'. Unlike the similar carrion crow, it has a grey bill and 'baggy trouser…

The yellow, star-like flowers of bog asphodel brighten up our peat bogs, damp heaths and moors in early summer, attracting a range of pollinating insects.

The delightful fragrance of wild thyme can punctuate a summer walk over a chalk grassland. It forms low-growing mats with dense clusters of purple-pink flowers.

Often seen carpeting the floor of ancient woodlands, Dog's mercury can quickly colonise, its fresh green leaves shading out rarer plants. It is also very poisonous.

Hedge mustard is a tall plant with small, yellow flowers atop tough stems. It likes disturbed ground and grows in hedgerows and roadside verges, and on waste ground.

Cross-leaved heath is a type of heather that likes bogs, heathland and moorland. It has distinctive pink, bell-shaped flowers that attract all kinds of nectar-loving insects.

The pretty-in-purple Pasqueflower is now a rare plant in the UK, restricted to just a few chalk and limestone grasslands. Steeped in legend, it flowers at Easter, so is known as the 'anemone…

Pepper saxifrage is a classic plant of unimproved hay meadows and roadside verges. It's upright, branching stems carry umbrella-like clusters of creamy-yellow, flowers in summer.

The true fox-sedge is a rare and threatened plant in the UK. It relies on lowland floodplain meadows and damp habitats, which are rapidly disappearing. Look for reddish-brown flowers in summer.…

A scrambling plant, Bush vetch has lilac-blue flowers. It is a member of the pea family and can be seen along woodland edges and roadside verges, and on scrubland and grassland.