Despite popular belief, and its name (from the Old English for 'ear beetle'), the Common earwig will not crawl into your ear while you sleep - it much prefers a nice log or stone pile!…

The brown shrimp blends perfectly with its seabed home and is found all around the coasts of the UK.

Common cow-wheat is a delicate annual that brightens up the edges of acid woodland and heaths with deep golden flowers in the summer.

The dark green, straight and spiky stems of common club-rush or 'bulrush' are a familiar wetland sight. They are ideal for weaving and were traditionally used to make baskets, seats and…

A member of the buttercup family, Common water-crowfoot displays white, buttercup-like flowers with yellow centres. It can form mats in ponds, ditches and streams during spring and summer.

Found in ponds and marshes, the fragile look of the Common water-measurer belies its fierce nature. A predator of small insects, it uses the vibrations of the water's surface to locate its…

Common mouse-ear is a persistent 'weed' of fields and gardens, verges and hedgerows - all kinds of habitats. But, like many of our weed species, it is still a good food source for…

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.

An introduced species, Common evening-primrose is now naturalised on waste ground, roadside verges and railway cuttings. It has long been used to produce the herbal remedy, evening-primrose oil.…

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 common spotted-orchid is the easiest of all our orchids to see: sometimes, so many flowers appear together that they create a pale pink carpet in our woodlands, old quarries, dunes and marshes…