Familiar as the bristly plant that easily hooks on to our clothing as we walk through the countryside or do the gardening, cleavers uses its hooks to help it climb and to disperse its seeds.

A very rare ant, once found on heathland across southern England but now restricted to Scotland and Devon. It constructs distinctive thatched nests in open areas at the edges of scrub, and forages…

The black garden ant is the familiar and abundant small ant that lives in gardens, but also turns up indoors searching for sugary food. In summer, winged adults, or 'flying ants', swarm…

The garden tiger is an attractive, brown-and-white moth of sand dunes, woodland edges, meadows and hedgerows; it will also visit gardens. In decline, it is suffering from the 'tidying up…

Piddocks are a boring bivalve. No, we don't mean dull... we mean that it bores into soft rock, creating a burrow. In fact, they're the opposite of dull - they glow in the dark!

Common laburnum is an introduced species, planted in parks and gardens. It is most recognisable in flower - its hanging bunches of yellow blooms giving it the name 'golden rain'. It is…

Common cow-wheat is a delicate annual that brightens up the edges of acid woodland and heaths with deep golden flowers in the summer.