A funny little fellow in his glossy black dinner jacket and crisp white bib, the puffin is instantly recognisable thanks to its brightly coloured, parrot-like bill. Puffins use their colourful…

Living up to its name, the oak apple gall wasp produces growths, or 'galls', on oak twigs that look like little apples. Inside the gall, the larvae of the wasp feed on the host tissues,…

Growing in tufts, Crested dog's-tail is a stiff-looking grass, with a tightly packed, rectangular flower spike. Look for it in lowland meadows and grasslands.

A small, tufted fern, maidenhair spleenwort can be found growing out of crevices between rocks, in walls and on mossy branches across the UK.

Pellitory-of-the-wall is a small to medium-sized herb that frequently grows from cracks in old stone walls, pavements, cliffs and banks, and churches and ruins.

This yellow-brown seaweed grows in dense masses on the mid shore of sheltered rocky shores. It is identifiable by the egg-shaped air bladders that give it its name.

The Marsh helleborine is a beautiful orchid of fens, wet grassland and dune slacks. Growing in profusion in places, look for reddish stems and white-and-pink flowers.

The shiny, translucent porcelain fungus certainly lives up to its name in appearance. It can be seen growing on beech trees and dead wood in summer and autumn.

With club-shaped leaflets on its fronds, wall-rue is easy to spot as it grows out of crevices in walls. Plant it in your garden rockery to provide cover for insects.

Water-cress has become so popular as a salad addition that it is now cultivated on a wide scale. In the wild, it grows in shallow, fast-flowing streams and is an indicator of clean water.