The moth-like dingy skipper is a small, grey-brown butterfly of open, sunny habitats like chalk grassland, sand dunes, heathland and waste ground.

Greater celandine is a very common plant that spreads easily in the garden, on waste ground and in hedgerows. It is considered a weed, but the small, yellow flowers provide nectar for insects.

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.

A notoriously poisonous plant, hemlock produces umbrella-like clusters of white flowers in summer. It can be found in damp places, such as ditches, riverbanks and waste ground.

The noble chafer is a rare and beautiful metallic-green beetle that can be found in traditional orchards. It is on the wing over summer, feeding on umbellifers. The larvae live in the decaying…

The turkeytail is a very colourful bracket fungus that grows throughout the year, but is at its best in the autumn. Its circular caps can be seen growing in tiers on trees and dead wood.

Barnacles are so common on our rocky shores that you've probably never really noticed them. They're the little grey bumps covering the rocks that hurt your feet when you're…

Buddleia is a familiar shrub, well-known for its attractiveness to butterflies. It is actually an introduced species, however, that has become naturalised on waste ground, railway cuttings and in…

A scrambling 'weed' of waste ground, fields and gardens, Common fumitory can be found on dry and disturbed soils. Its pink flowers appear over spring and summer.