A well-travelled migrant, the painted lady arrives here every summer from Europe and Africa. This beautiful orange-and-black butterfly regularly visits gardens.

The beautiful pink and white bands of a Painted topshell make it easy to see where this little sea snail got its name!

The bee orchid is a sneaky mimic - the flower’s velvety lip looks like a female bee. Males fly in to try to mate with it and end up pollinating the flower. Sadly, the right bee species doesn’t…

This unassuming orchid is easily overlooked. It is found patchily across the UK, but has been declining for decades.

The Early purple orchid is one of the first orchids to pop up in spring. Look for its pinkish-purple flowers from April, when bluebells still carpet our woodland floors. Its leaves are dark green…

The petals of the rare Lizard orchid's flowers form the head, legs and long tail of a lizard. They are greenish, with light pink spots and stripes, and smell strongly of goats! Spot this tall…

The pyramidal orchid lives up to its name - look for a bright pinky-purple, densely packed pyramid of flowers atop a green stem. It likes chalk grassland, sand dunes, roadside verges and quarries…

A short, but pretty plant of unimproved grasslands, the Green-winged orchid gets its name from the green veins in the 'hood' of its flowers. Look for it in May and June.

This slim fish is usually found on gravelly parts of the seabed, close to shore, but can turn up in rockpools.

This is probably the most widespread and commonest of the marsh orchids.

The fly-shaped flowers of this fascinating plant are attractive to insects - but not the ones you might expect!

The Bird's-nest orchid gets its name from its nest-like tangle of roots. Unlike other green plants, it doesn’t get its energy from sunlight. Instead, it grows as a parasite on tree roots, so…