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…

An introduced species, Common evening-primrose is now naturalised on waste ground, roadside verges and railway cuttings. It has long been used to produce the herbal remedy, evening-primrose oil.…

It’s easy to see where these butterflies get their name – the males have bright orange tips on their wings! See them from early spring through to summer in meadows, woodland and hedges.

The whimbrel is very similar to the curlew, but a little smaller and with a striking face pattern. Its eerie call is a series of seven whistles; listen out for it around the coast as its passes…

The linnet can be seen on farmland and heathland across the UK. But, like so many other farmland birds, linnets are declining rapidly, mainly due to agricultural intensification.

The song of the Roesel's bush-cricket is very characteristic: long, monotonous and mechanical. It can be heard in rough grassland, scrub and damp meadows in the south of the UK, but it is…

Their empty, delicate pink or yellow shells can often be found washed up on beaches, but the animals themselves live buried in the sand all around the coasts of the UK.

The delightful fragrance of wild thyme can punctuate a summer walk over a chalk grassland. It forms low-growing mats with dense clusters of purple-pink flowers.

A common tree, ash is familiar to many of us for its autumnal bunches of winged seeds, called 'keys'. It can be found in woodlands and prefers damp and fertile soils.

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.

Famed for its tapping in the middle of the night, supposedly heralding tragedy, the Deathwatch beetle is a serious wood-boring pest. In houses, their tunnelling can cause major damage.

A scarce tree of England and Wales, the Large-leaved lime is the rarest of our native limes. It is tall and broad, and can be found in forests and parks, where it is frequently planted.