The forest floor

In temperate forests, plant life has to adapt to the four seasons. Flowers must shoot up early in the spring, before the trees start growing leaves blocking the sunlight. Then plants that have evolved to live in the shade take over, such as ferns and mosses, surviving on the little light that filters through.

Flower stems are held above the leaves to attract pollinators. Bell-shaped flowers carpet forest floors in western Europe in spring.

These star-shaped flowers have a musky smell.

Cushions of moss can reach 4 in (10 cm) in height.

The hairs attract insects for pollination, but this orchid does not produce nutritious nectar.

These edible leaves have a garlicky smell and flavor.

The pouchshaped petals force insects to brush past the yellow pollen above, aiding pollination.

The wood anemone is one of the first flowers to emerge in early spring. Squill and wild garlic soon follow, shooting up from underground bulbs and soaking up sunlight with their long leaves before the trees above burst into leaf. These plants are known as “spring ephemerals” because they spend just a few weeks in bloom before dying back, ready for next spring. The large-flowered trillium survives like this for up to 70 years. Enclosed by a thick green canopy of leaves, the forest floor is dark, cool, and damp throughout the summer, ideal conditions for sword ferns and mosses to grow. In autumn the leaves fall from the trees, insulating the earth in the colder months and building up a thick layer of matter to enrich the soil.

Each pinna (leaflet) has a lobe that sticks up at its base, giving it the shape of a sword hilt. Six tepals grow around the anthers. The tepals curl back toward the stalk to advertise the flower to pollinators.

A striped bract surrounds and covers each flower spike.

if cooked properly, its root can be made into bread.

The three-petaled flowers first appear when this plant is 7–10 years old.

Dense clumps grow slowly but can reach 3 ft (1 m) wide. Each leaf is no more than 1⁄3 in (9 mm) long.