Great burnet
The egg-shaped, crimson flower heads of Great burnet give this plant the look of a lollipop! It can be found on floodplain meadows - a declining habitat which is under serious threat.
The egg-shaped, crimson flower heads of Great burnet give this plant the look of a lollipop! It can be found on floodplain meadows - a declining habitat which is under serious threat.
With its fluffy-looking, light blue flower heads, sheep's-bit is a pretty plant of dry grassland, heaths and clifftops. Sometimes carpeting an area, it is popular with nectar-loving insects…
A prickly, tall plant, the Small teasel is closely related to the Common teasel, but has much smaller, more rounded flower heads. It prefers damp, open woodlands.
Yarrow can be found in many grasslands, from lawns to meadows, its flat-topped clusters of flower heads appearing from June. Cultivated varieties are garden favourites.
The Carline thistle produces distinctive brown-and-golden flower heads that look like a seeded thistle. These flowers are attractive to a wide range of butterflies, including the very rare Large…
Looking like a short Dandelion, but with a much rounder middle, Colt's-foot is a 'weed' of waste ground and field edges that brightens up early spring with its sunshine-yellow…
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!
The tightly packed, thistle-like purple flower heads of common knapweed bloom on all kinds of grasslands. Also regularly called black knapweed, this plant attracts clouds of butterflies.
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.
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…
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!