Some of the flowers which last year were opening around mid-May are already out. They include three small pink flowers – herb robert, stork’s bill and red campion. The first two belong to the geranium family and have rather similar flowers, five-petalled and pink with red streaks, but they are not difficult to distinguish.

Herb robert is more of a woodland flower, with rich, fern-like clusters of leaves that are often flushed with crimson. Stork’s-bill is more likely to be found by dry paths, and has a rosette of leaves at the base, with fewer leaves on the stalk.

Both plants have seedpods that look like a bird’s head and beak, but the stork’s-bill beak is startlingly longer. Red campion is a very pink flower of hedge-banks, with notched petals.

In damp woods the starry yellow flowers of wood avens, or herb bennet, grow close to the ground, and here and there can be found patches of the bright blue bugle, a hairy plant with lipped flowers. In some woods it will soon carpet the ground, taking the place of the bluebells.