Look for the small, white, star-shaped flowers of Common chickweed all year-round. Sometimes considered a 'weed', it is still a valuable food source for insects.

A delicate, small plant of woodlands and hedgerows, wood-sorrel has distinctive, trefoil leaves and white flowers with purple veins; both fold up at night.

The moth-like dingy skipper is a small, grey-brown butterfly of open, sunny habitats like chalk grassland, sand dunes, heathland and waste ground.

A well-travelled migrant, the painted lady arrives here every summer from Europe and Africa. This beautiful orange-and-black butterfly regularly visits gardens.

The dazzling silver-studded blue is a rare butterfly of heathland habitats, mainly in southern England. It has undergone severe population declines in recent years.

This large burrowing bivalve is found on sandy seabeds around much of the UK. It is the longest-lived animal known to man, with one individual found to be 507 years old!

A notoriously poisonous plant, hemlock produces umbrella-like clusters of white flowers in summer. It can be found in damp places, such as ditches, riverbanks and waste ground.

Large scale drainage in the UK has seen a massive reduction in the range of this sensitive aquatic plant which now only occurs in around 50 sites in England.

A tall, domed tree of woodlands, hedgerows and parks, the introduced sycamore is familiar to many of us the 'helicopter' producing tree - its large, winged fruits appearing in autumn.…

A small and delicate plant of chalk grasslands, Fairy flax can be seen in bloom from May to September - look out for its nodding, white flowers.

Arrowhead is an aquatic plant of shallow water and slow-moving waterways. In bloom over summer, it displays small, white flowers, but it is the arrow-shaped leaves that are most distinctive.