With yellow-and-black bands, the giant horntail looks like a large wasp, but is harmless to us. The female uses her long, stinger-like ovipositor to lay eggs in pine trees, where the larvae then…

One of the joys of a spring day is watching a fluttering, lemon-yellow brimstone alight on a flower - an early sign that the seasons are changing. It is commonly spotted in gardens, woodland and…

In early spring, listen out for the 'chiff chaff chiff chaff' song of the appropriately named chiffchaff. It can be heard in woodland, scrub, parks and gardens across the UK.

In spring and summer, look out for 'cuckoo-spit' - the frothy mass of bubbles that appears on plant stems everywhere. This is actually the protective covering for the nymphs of the tiny…

A spring delight, the wood anemone grows in dappled shade in ancient woodlands. Traditional management, such as coppicing, can help such flowers by opening up the woodland floor to sunlight.

The small, brown Dartford warbler is most easily spotted when warbling its scratchy song from the top of a gorse stem. It lives on lowland heathland in the south of England, where it nests on the…

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.

A sure sign that spring has arrived, the Cuckooflower blooms from April. Look out for its delicate, pale pink flowers in damp meadows and ditches, and on riverbanks.

The song thrush is a familiar garden visitor that has a beautiful and loud song. The broken shells of their blue, spotty eggs can often be found under a hedge in spring.

The wayfaring-tree is a small tree of hedgerows, woods, scrub and downland. It displays creamy-white flowers in spring and red berries in autumn, which ripen to black and are very poisonous.

Introduced from Japan in the 19th century, Japanese knotweed is now an invasive non-native plant of many riverbanks, waste grounds and roadside verges, where it prevents native species from…