Look for the delicate, pink flowers of Common bistort in wet meadows, pastures and roadside verges. It is also known as 'Pudding Dock' in North England because it was used to make a…

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 late-blooming flower, Meadow saffron looks like a crocus, displaying similar pink flowers once its leaves have died back. It is a highly poisonous plant of meadows and woodland rides and…

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…

Ivy-leaved toadflax is an introduced species in the UK that has become widely naturalised. Look for creeping along old walls and pavements, and shingle beaches. Its flowers resemble those of…

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.

Heralding spring, a carpet of sunshine-yellow lesser celandine flowers is a joy to see on a woodland walk. Look out for it along hedgerows, in parks and even in graveyards, too, from March onwards…

This slim fish is usually found on gravelly parts of the seabed, close to shore, but can turn up in rockpools.

This comical little duck lives up to its name – look out for the black tuft of feathers on its head!