So you want to see some wildflowers? You can start in your own back garden, or at the nearest roadside, or wandering through a nearby wood. The beauty of these flowers is that they are everywhere, they spread on the wind and seed themselves wherever the soil allows.
Arm yourself with a good guide book; there are many on the market and it's worth having a flick through several. Marjorie Blamey's Wildflowers By Colour divides plants into 14 different colour categories to make it easier to search for the flower you are identifying. Others, such as the popular Collins guides, divide by flower family, which is a little less easy to use for flower identification.
Plant lovers generally divide the world into different types of habitat, and the flowers you will find on any wildflower outing are utterly dependent on where you're going, and what time of year you get there. The most common habitats are woodland, marsh, coastal, grassland, arable fields, hedgerows, lakes and canals, riverbanks, roadsides and urban environments, mountains, hills, and open heaths and moors. Each of those habitats can divide down still further: the Wildlife Trust, for example, divides grassland into "lowland dry acid grassland" and "upland calcareous grasslands", among several other groups.
And each habitat sustains different species. Up on the moors, for example, you'll find lousewort, heath spotted orchid, broom and bog bilberry. On the dunes you can seek out sea spurge, silverweed, rough clover and prickly saltwort, while our hedgerows are the best place to rummage for dogwood, guelder rose, honeysuckle and sweet violet. In the woods, you can search for lesser celandine, wood anemone, stinking hellebore or wild cherry; for monkey flower, water mint and purple loosestrife, you need to go to the river's edge.
If you want to go a bit further afield, however, there are several organisations that run wonderful nature reserves in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. It's worth noting that there are different types of nature reserves in England. National nature reserves, such as Lindisfarne in Northumberland, the Lizard in Cornwall, and the Derbyshire Dales, are usually fairly large, and cover areas that are seen to be of national importance. Local nature reserves, chosen by local authorities, are often smaller, though far more numerous. Reserves are usually managed on behalf of the government or the local authority by organisations such as Natural England, the Wildlife Trusts, the National Trust, the Woodland Trust and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, as well as many smaller organisations such as Plantlife.
All of these organisations list the reserves they manage on their website. The Wildlife Trusts has even got a special section suggesting where to go if you want to see specific wildflowers: Clattinger Farm in Wiltshire, for adders tongue fern and meadow saffron, or Umbra near Derry in Northern Ireland for marsh helleborine and grass of parnassus.
Plantlife manages more than 20 reserves around the country, such as the Munsary Peatlands on the very northernmost tip of Scotland. Here in the boggy soil you'll find bog asphodel, deergrass and carpets of sphagnum mosses. The Woodland Trust runs the useful Visit Woods website which will give you a list of the woods in your area, along with information about what you can find there. And Natural England is a vital repository of useful information about the national nature reserves it manages, such as Finglandrigg Woods in Cumbria, where devil's bit scabious, the food of the marsh fritillary butterfly, is encouraged, or Golitha Falls in Cornwall, famous for mosses and lichens as well as a huge range of wildflowers.
