The brown shrimp blends perfectly with its seabed home and is found all around the coasts of the UK.

A member of the buttercup family, Common water-crowfoot displays white, buttercup-like flowers with yellow centres. It can form mats in ponds, ditches and streams during spring and summer.

Found in ponds and marshes, the fragile look of the Common water-measurer belies its fierce nature. A predator of small insects, it uses the vibrations of the water's surface to locate its…

Common mouse-ear is a persistent 'weed' of fields and gardens, verges and hedgerows - all kinds of habitats. But, like many of our weed species, it is still a good food source for…

Common sea-lavender can be found around our coasts on mudflats, creek banks and saltmarshes. Despite its name, its not a lavender at all, so doesn’t smell like one.

An introduced species, Common evening-primrose is now naturalised on waste ground, roadside verges and railway cuttings. It has long been used to produce the herbal remedy, evening-primrose oil.…

The common green lacewing is a lime green, delicate insect, with translucent, intricately veined wings. It is common in gardens and parks, where it helps to control aphid pests.

Forming mats of straight, bright green stems, Common spike-rush does, indeed, look like lots of tightly clustered 'spikes' near the water's edge of our wetland habitats.

The common spotted-orchid is the easiest of all our orchids to see: sometimes, so many flowers appear together that they create a pale pink carpet in our woodlands, old quarries, dunes and marshes…

The Common fragrant-orchid lives up to its name: it produces a sweet, orangey smell that is very strong in the evening. Look for its densely packed, pink flower spikes on chalk grasslands in…

Our most familiar wild violet, the Common dog-violet can be spotted in a range of habitats from woodland to grassland, hedgerows to pastures. Its pansy-like, purple flowers appear from April to…

Living up to its name the Common blue damselfly is both very common and very blue. It regularly visits gardens - try digging a wildlife-friendly pond to attract damselflies and dragonflies.