Cotton spinner
Although they might not look it, sea cucumbers like this one belong to the Echinoderm group and are therefore closely related to starfish and sea urchins
Although they might not look it, sea cucumbers like this one belong to the Echinoderm group and are therefore closely related to starfish and sea urchins
Bittersweet is a nightshade, so is toxic; its bright red berries may be tempting, but can cause serious illness. Found in hedgerows and gardens, it has purple flowers with yellow stamens.
A tall orchid of woodland and scrub, the broad-leaved helleborine has greenish, purple-tinged flowers that look a little 'drooping'. Strongly veined, oval leaves spiral around its stem…
The bulbous buttercup has the familiar butter-yellow flowers of its namesake, but grows from a bulb-like 'corm' (a swollen underground stem). Look for it on chalk and limestone…
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.
Heather is also called 'ling'. Look for it on our heaths, moors and bogs, where its delicate, loosely arranged pink flowers attract all kinds of nectar-loving insects.
The small, yellow flowers and woolly appearance of kidney vetch make this plant easy to spot. Look for it growing low to the ground on sand dunes, chalk grasslands and cliffs in summer.
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…
The red admiral is an unmistakable garden visitor. This black-and-red beauty may be seen feeding on flowers on warm days all year-round. Adults are mostly migrants, but some do hibernate here.
Tall melilot was introduced into the UK as a fodder crop, but has now become naturalised. It displays golden, pea-like flowers on tall spikes, which are followed by black, hairy seed pods.
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.
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…