WITH less light to trap for energy, freezing nights and days can easily damage fragile leaves.

Winter is the time most plants decide to cut their losses and draw back any useful nutrients from their leaves back into their stems and roots.

The relatively slow retraction of these useful substances and particularly the highly valuable and bright green chemical, chlorophyll is responsible for the wonderful and varied shades of autumn colour we see in leaves at this time of year.

However, not all plants take this approach. Some have chosen to retain their leaves and remain active throughout the year.

One of the most obvious at this time of year is the holly, thanks to the wonderful display of berries produced this year.

If you look closely at a holly leaf and compare it to a leaf from a deciduous tree such as an oak for instance, you will see that the holly leaf is much thicker in cross section and appears to have a thick protective coat of waxy flesh.

This is in-built chemical anti-freeze, which protects the delicate energy producing cells within its leaf from the worst of the winter chill.

It is not just large tree-like plants that have evolved methods to allow them to continue to thrive throughout the winter. Probably the most unlikely has to be an evolutionary offshoot of the algae family.

Algae are probably most familiar to us as the green slime-like plant found growing on the glass of a poorly maintained fish tank.

You have to admit surviving on dry land, no matter riding out a bleak winter would seem a challenge to this plant.

However, through a cunning partnership with fungi, it has not only achieved this, but has even gone on to thrive in places far too hostile for most other life forms to exist, from the hottest and driest deserts to the bleak continent of Antarctica.

This partnership of species is called lichen.

It is a true partnership with both species benefiting from each other's abilities with the tough indestructibility of the fungi and the ability of the algae to trap energy from the sun.

In many places now as softer plants lose their leaves, the many hundreds of species of lichen start to come into prominence.

A trip to Habberley Valley will reveal just how diverse this strange family of organisms has become as the rocks and bark of the trees are covered with a wonderful array of differing species.

In just a few weeks' time, the heaths will be considerably brightened up when one species "flowers" a wonderful scarlet colour.