细果紫堇 xi guo zi jin

Herbs, perennial, glabrous, flowering second (rarely first) year, diffuse, 15-50 cm tall. Taproot persistent, crowned by very short firm knotty rhizome 5-10 × 3-5 mm, with tiny traces of previous year’s rosette leaves, apically with lax leaf rosette and few to several stems. Stems decumbent, weak, branched. Rosette leaves few, mostly withered at flowering; petiole 6-12 cm, base sheathed; cauline leaves: petiole 3-7 cm, base with membranous auricles, axillary buds thick, black; blade glaucous abaxially, green adaxially, triangular, 2-8 × 2-6 cm, biternate; pinnae long petiolulate; pinnules shortly petiolulate, narrowly flabellate, entire to divided, coarsely crenate-dentate to lobed; teeth/lobules rounded, mucronate. Racemes 2-7(-9)-flowered, 2-5 cm; bracts broadly obovate to oblong-cuneate, 6-11 mm, deeply 3-divided or coarsely dentate with acute teeth to almost entire; upper ones entire. Pedicel 3-6 mm in flower, in fruit elongating to 5-10 mm. Sepals rounded, peltate, 1-2 mm, finely dentate. Corolla purple or white; upper petal 23-28 mm, acuminate, abaxially with short crest ca. 1 mm wide; spur straight, slightly tapering to apex, 11-14 mm; nectary 1/3-1/2 as long as spur; lower petal 12-15 mm, abaxially shortly crested; claw with narrow basal 1/3, slightly broader straight or saccate middle 1/3, distal 1/3 widened into elliptic acuminate limb; inner petals 11-14 mm. Stigma square, with 6 marginal simple papillae (lateral ones sometimes confluent); geminate papillae lateral (submarginal) and on basal lobes. Capsule 19-26(-38) × ca. 2 mm, 10-20-seeded; style ca. 2 mm. Seeds 1.5-1.7 mm, smooth; caruncle broad, spreading. Fl. and fr. Apr-Dec.

Forest understories, slopes, along channels, roadsides stone crevices, evergreen broad-leaved forests in subtropics; 1200-2600 m. S and W Yunnan [Bhutan, India (Assam), N Myanmar, E Nepal, N Thailand].

This species and the following four species make up the Corydalis leptocarpa complex. The taxonomy of this complex is as yet partly unresolved, and its treatment here is to be regarded as preliminary.