The fluffy, white heads of common cotton-grass dot our brown, boggy moors and heaths as if a giant bag of cotton wool balls has been thrown across the landscape!

Greater burdock is familiar to us as the sticky plant that children delight in, frequently throwing the burs at each other. It actually uses these hooked seed heads to help disperse its seeds.

As its name suggests, quaking-grass can be seen quivering or 'quaking' in a breezy, summer wildflower meadow. Its purple-and-green, heart-shaped flower heads hang from delicate stems.…

The rhinoceros beetle lives up to its name by sporting a distinctive 'horn' on the males' head. This glossy, blue-black beetle can be found in woods, parks and hedgerows, and…

The distinctive spiky, or 'bearded', green flower heads of wall barley appear from June to July and are easy to spot in an urban environment as they push their way up through pavements…

If you’ve ever been rockpooling, you’ve probably seen a limpet or two! Their cone-shaped shells clamp onto rocks until the tide comes in, at which point they become active. Limpets move around…

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…

Look out for the white, umbrella-like flower heads of lesser water-parsnip along the shallow margins of ditches, ponds, lakes and rivers. When crushed, it does, indeed, smell like parsnip!

On first glance, the meadow thistle looks a bit like a knapweed - it's not as prickly as other thistles and only carries one pinky-purple flower head. It can be found in damp meadows and…

A common thistle of roadside verges, rough grassland and waste ground, the Musk thistle has large, purple, nodding flower heads that appear in summer. It is attractive to a wide range of insects…