Cyperus sedge - Carex pseudocyperus

If you don't know, sedges look a lot like grasses with long green leaves. However, grasses have leaves in two ranks up the stem (i.e. alternate) whereas sedges have leaves in whorls of three. This means that usually the stem of a sedge seems almost triangular. This is a picture of the female part of the flower head. It's a massive, spikly drooping flower head and is fairly unmistakeable, i think. This plant was growing on the side of a ditch at Amberley Wildbrooks.

Branched Bur-Reed - Sparganium erectum

The flowers of this plant are awesome! Look how strange and sculpted they look. I love the way they almost look like hairy maltesers (it's dinner time - bear with me). The flowers turn green eventually. The leaves of this plant look like a large juicy grass, they are arranged in two ranks up the stem. However, the leaves are very large and fleshy and traingular in section. Also, the base of the leaves are a dull pinkish colour. This plant is usually found growing in wetlands, places like ditches are good for spotting it.

Amphibious bistort - Polygonum amphibium

Sorry about the rubbish photo, i couldn't get any closer to the plant and then my camera died. I love the name of this species. This plant is either found in freshwater or growing close to it on banks. When it grows out of the water the leaves are much more rounded.

Yellow water lily - Nuphar lutea

I don't think there's much that you could mistake this species with. There's a similar species called least water lilly but this plant has flowers that are less than 4cm whereas N.lutea has flowers larger than 4cm. I found this growing in the lake at Wood's Mill.

Just took this picture (16Jun07) and thought i'd include it in this post as you get a much better shot of the picture. This flower was seen at the lake in Abbot's wood.