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 mountain hare lives in the Scottish Highlands and the north of England. They are renowned for turning white in winter to match their upland surroundings.

The porbeagle shark is a member of the shark family Lamnidae, making it one of the closest living relatives of the great white shark.

The Broad centurion, or 'Green soldier fly', is one of our most common soldier flies, and is often found in gardens. It has hairy eyes and a metallic blue or bronze body. It is an…

Great reedmace is familiar to many of us as the archetypal 'bulrush'. Look for its tall stems, sausage-like, brown flower heads and green, flat leaves at the water's edge in our…

The umbrella-like clusters of white, frothy flowers of cow parsley are a familiar sight along roadsides, hedgerows and woodland edges.

Look for the unusual flowers of lords-and-ladies in spring woodlands: a pale green sheath surrounds a spike of tiny, yellow flowers. This spike eventually forms a familiar, short stalk of striking…

Parsley fern lives up to its name - the pale green fronds form in clusters among rocks and look just like parsley. Look out for it in upland areas, particularly in Wales and Cumbria.

The vast, green mats that sometimes cover the surface of still water, such as ponds, flooded gravel pits and old canals, are actually Common duckweed. A tiny, single plant, it groups together to…

Despite its name, Spurge laurel is not a laurel - it just looks like one! It has glossy, dark green leaves and black, poisonous berries, and can be found in woodlands in southern England, in…

The pyramidal orchid lives up to its name - look for a bright pinky-purple, densely packed pyramid of flowers atop a green stem. It likes chalk grassland, sand dunes, roadside verges and quarries…

This snowy white moth is easily mistaken for the similar brown-tail, until it lifts its abdomen to reveal a burst of golden-yellow.