大围山紫堇 da wei shan zi jin

Herbs, perennial, glabrous, 40-100 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 long trailing leading stems. Stems procumbent to ascending or climbing, sometimes rooting at ± thickened leaf nodes, sparingly branched. Rosette leaves: petiole 6-13 cm; cauline leaves: petiole 3-7 cm; blade glaucous abaxially, green or slightly glaucous adaxially, triangular, 2-7 × 2-8 cm (lower leaves larger, uppermost smaller), biternate; pinnae long petiolulate; pinnules shortly petiolulate (or long stalked in shaded situations), obovate-cuneate, entire to deeply divided, coarsely crenate-dentate to lobed; teeth/lobules rounded, mucronate. Racemes 2-5-flowered; bracts broadly obovate, 4-8 mm, almost entire to coarsely dentate. Pedicel 2-5 mm in flower, hardly elongating in fruit. Sepals rounded, minute or to 1.5 mm, deeply dentate. Corolla yellow (but see note); upper petal 25-28 mm, subacute, usually with short narrow dentate crest ca. 1 mm wide; spur slightly downcurved, cylindric or slightly tapering to apex, 12-14 mm; nectary ca. 1/3 as long as spur; inner petals 12-15 mm. Stigma square; marginal simple papillae: median 2 distinct, lateral ones broad, diffuse; geminate papillae lateral (submarginal) and on basal lobes. Capsule narrowly lanceolate, 20-25 × ca. 3 mm, 10-20-seeded; style ca. 2 mm. Seeds in 2 rows or almost so, ca. 1.2 mm, smooth. Fl. and fr. Apr-Jun.

● Shrubs, forest understories along rivers; 1500-1600 m. SE Yunnan (Pingbian: Dawei Shan).

This poorly known taxon, not yet formally described, is closely similar to Corydalis leptocarpa and C. dulongjiangensis and needs further study, for example on geographic variation. A very similar purple-flowered plant (C. taliensis Franchet var. potentillifolia C. Y. Wu & H. Chuang, Acta Bot. Yunnan. 13: 137. 1991), from further west in the same general area (Lüchun), deviates in having smaller leaves, longer pedicels, and shorter spurs, and may be distinct.