Spear thistle
A common plant of disturbed ground like roadside verges and field edges, the spear thistle has purple, fluffy flower heads that appear in summer. Its flowers attract insects and its seeds feed…
A common plant of disturbed ground like roadside verges and field edges, the spear thistle has purple, fluffy flower heads that appear in summer. Its flowers attract insects and its seeds feed…
Fennel has feathery leaves and open, umbels of yellow flowers. It was probably introduced by the Romans for culinary use, and is now a naturalised species of verges, waste ground and sand dunes.…
Unsurprisingly, the chalkhill blue can be found on sunny, chalk grassland sites in southern England. Clouds of this beautiful blue butterfly may be seen fluttering around low-growing flowers.
As its name suggests, Red bartsia does have a red tinge to its stem, leaves and small flowers. Look for it on roadside verges, railway cuttings and waste ground in summer.
A plant of chalk and limestone grasslands and sand dunes, Yellow-wort has butter-yellow flowers. Its distinctive leaves sit opposite each other, but are fused together around the stem.
These bulky beetles can sometimes be found on flowers in woodland rides or along hedgerows.
The bee orchid is a sneaky mimic - the flower’s velvety lip looks like a female bee. Males fly in to try to mate with it and end up pollinating the flower. Sadly, the right bee species doesn’t…
So-named for its spear-like leaves, Lesser spearwort can be found along the edges of ponds, lakes and streams, and in marshes and wet meadows. As a buttercup, it displays familiar, butter-yellow…
Tormentil can be found growing on acid grassland, heathland and moorland, but even pops up alongside roads. It bears yellow, buttercup-like flowers, but with only four petals (buttercups have five…
The fly-shaped flowers of this fascinating plant are attractive to insects - but not the ones you might expect!
Also known as 'Scorpion-grass' because of the curved 'tail' at the end of its stems, Water forget-me-not is a distinctive plant of damp habitats. Over summer, it produces…
A common hoverfly, the Heineken fly has a distinctively long snout that enables it to take nectar from deeper flowers, reaching the parts other hoverflies cannot reach! It frequents hedgerows,…