Common sea-lavender
Common sea-lavender can be found around our coasts on mudflats, creek banks and saltmarshes. Despite its name, its not a lavender at all, so doesn’t smell like one.
Common sea-lavender can be found around our coasts on mudflats, creek banks and saltmarshes. Despite its name, its not a lavender at all, so doesn’t smell like one.
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.
The Common fragrant-orchid lives up to its name: it produces a sweet, orangey smell that is very strong in the evening. Look for its densely packed, pink flower spikes on chalk grasslands in…
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…
The rare Adonis blue can be spotted on sunny chalk grasslands throughout summer. Males are a dazzling sky-blue in colour, while females are duller brown.
Often confused with the larger but similarly shaped lion’s mane jellyfish, the blue jellyfish can be colourless when young and develop a striking blue-purple bell as it matures.
Our most familiar wild violet, the Common dog-violet can be spotted in a range of habitats from woodland to grassland, hedgerows to pastures. Its pansy-like, purple flowers appear from April to…
Despite its name, the large blue is a fairly small butterfly, but the largest of our blues. It was declared extinct in 1979, but reintroduced in the 1980s and now survives in southern England.
The diminutive common eyelash fungus can be found on wet wood and humous-rich damp soil, often by streams or in wet places. Its orange cup is fringed with tiny, black hairs, providing its common…
A familiar garden bird, the blue tit can be seen around bird tables and feeders, as well as in woodlands and parks. Listen out for its trilling, 'tsee-tsee-tsee' song. It is smaller than…
Wasps are well-known, and unfortunately not very well-loved! But give these black and yellow guys a chance, as they are important pollinators and pest controllers.
This large, brown beetle can be seen swarming around streetlights in spring. They live underground as larvae for years and emerge as adults often in large numbers. Listen for their characteristic…