The Yew is a well-known tree of churchyards, but also grows wild on chalky soils. Yew trees can live for hundreds of years, turning into a maze of hollow wood and fallen trunks beneath dense…

Tansy is an aromatic plant of rough grassland, riverbanks and verges that has button-like, yellow flower heads. It is the main foodplant of the rare Tansy Beetle, now found at only two places in…

Perhaps the first sign that spring is just around the corner is the snowdrop poking its way through the frosted soil of a woodland, churchyard or garden. From January, look for its famous nodding…

Once widespread, this attractive plant has declined as a result of modern agricultural practices and is now only found in four sites in South East England.

The violet click beetle is a very rare beetle that lives in decaying wood, particularly common beech and ash. It gets its name from its habit of springing upwards with an audible click if it falls…

Large scale drainage in the UK has seen a massive reduction in the range of this sensitive aquatic plant which now only occurs in around 50 sites in England.

Bladder campion is so-called for the bladder-like bulge that sites just behind the five-petalled flower - this is actually the fused sepals. Look for it on grasslands, farmland and along hedgerows…

The rare heath fritillary was on the brink of extinction in the 1970s, but conservation action turned its fortunes around. It is still confined to a small number of sites in the south of England,…

A true wildlife 'hotel', Honeysuckle is a climbing plant that caters for all kinds of wildlife: it provides nectar for insects, prey for bats, nest sites for birds and food for small…