Light and dark

I went up to the Celandine area, but the buds were still closed. I did, however, find a few open specimens of Coltsfoot:

Coltsfoot

Coltsfoot is quite interesting in a couple of ways:

1) The flowers always appear before the leaves
2) The stems have a fine cobwebby covering which tightens and stretches to alter the attitude of the flowerhead and seedhead as the season progresses.

Gorse has also come back into flower:

Gorse flowers

At this point, the rain became much heavier and the next Gorse shot has a very interesting background:

Gorse in heavy rain

Damaged parts of leaves attract me like a magnet: they usually indicate a fungal influence or signs of something feeding . This Common Polypody had a single leaflet that was clearly eaten:

Polypodium with feeding signs

I flipped it over and immediately saw that a micromoth had been eating the spores and had made its pupation case from the leftovers:

Pupation case of micromoth

The pupation case is the large cluster of sori just below centre.

Only one micromoth  - Psychoides filicivora - has been recorded from Polypody, so I rather suspect this is the beast we have here.