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

A low-growing plant of sand dunes, heaths and grassy places, Common centaury is in bloom over summer. Look for clusters of pretty, pink, five-petalled flowers.

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.

The common polypody is a hardy fern of damp, shady places in woodlands. It also makes a good garden fern. It has ladder-like, leathery foliage with pimply undersides - these spots are the spores…

If you were to pick up a rock in the garden, you’d hopefully find a few common woodlouse. These hardy minibeasts have in-built armour and like to hide in warm, moist places like compost heaps.

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 diminutive common eyelash fungus can be found on wet wood and humous-rich damp soil, often by streams or in wet places. Its orange cup is fringed with tiny, black hairs, providing its common…