Dog's mercury
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.
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.
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.
Great reedmace is familiar to many of us as the archetypal 'bulrush'. Look for its tall stems, sausage-like, brown flower heads and green, flat leaves at the water's edge in our…
Parsley fern lives up to its name - the pale green fronds form in clusters among rocks and look just like parsley. Look out for it in upland areas, particularly in Wales and Cumbria.
Discover more about our amazing wildlife in the UK! Learn more about the plants and animals on your doorstep.
The vast, green mats that sometimes cover the surface of still water, such as ponds, flooded gravel pits and old canals, are actually Common duckweed. A tiny, single plant, it groups together to…
Despite its name, Spurge laurel is not a laurel - it just looks like one! It has glossy, dark green leaves and black, poisonous berries, and can be found in woodlands in southern England, in…
Look for the unusual flowers of lords-and-ladies in spring woodlands: a pale green sheath surrounds a spike of tiny, yellow flowers. This spike eventually forms a familiar, short stalk of striking…
The pyramidal orchid lives up to its name - look for a bright pinky-purple, densely packed pyramid of flowers atop a green stem. It likes chalk grassland, sand dunes, roadside verges and quarries…
Elliott has turned his passion for the natural world into study and that study into a career. He now spends his days sharing his wildlife knowledge with people of all ages, from 4-year-old’s…
Unlike blanket bog, which smothers vast tracts of the uplands, raised bogs are discrete entities, often individually named, and are mostly found within agricultural landscapes in the lowlands.