Volume 6

English botany, or, Coloured figures of British plants : with their essential characters, synonyms, and places of growth / By Sir James Edward Smith.

  • Sowerby, James, 1757-1822.
Date:
[1841-1852]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: English botany, or, Coloured figures of British plants : with their essential characters, synonyms, and places of growth / By Sir James Edward Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    7/576
    Class XVII. DIADELPHIA. Order Ii HEXANDRIA. Genus CCCLXX. CORYDALIS. Corydalis. Nat. Order. Fumariace^e. Gen. Char. Calyx 2-leaved, deciduous. Petals 4, one of them with a spur at the base or saccate. Silique 2-valved, compressed, many-seeded. Herbs of temperate and cold climates. They have often tuberous roots. The leaves, usually alternate, are more or less divided in a ternate manner, and frequently cirrhose. Flowers irregular, ringent, mostly purple or yellowish. Ra¬ cemes axillary and terminal. The genus was originally con¬ founded with Fumaria, from which it differs in the dehiscent and polvspermous fruit. CORYDALIS solid a. Solid Bulbous Corydalis. Tab. 983. Root a solid tuber. Stem simple, erect, with a scale below the lower leaf. Leaves 3 or 4, biternate, with cuneate segments. Bracteas palmate. Fumaria solida, Linn. E. B. 1471- Smith III. 253. Corydalis bulbosa, DeCand. Bindley 19. Macreight Man. Brit. Bot. ] 1. C. solida, Hooker ed. 2. 315. ed. 3. 319. This beautiful spring flower has been found in several parts of the kingdom, but under circumstances that will scarcely warrant its being considered indigenous or even naturalized. In old gardens it is not uncommon, increasing quickly by the multiplication of its bulb-like tubers, but seldom by seed. Stem 1 from each root, about a span high, somewhat zigzag, smooth, declining at first, but always erect when in flower; bearing 1 or 2 lanceolate scales toward the lower part. Leaves 2 to 4, glaucous, smooth, biternate, cut. Raceme ter¬ minal, bearing many comparatively large, purple flowers, each with a palmate bractea at the base of its pedicel. Perennial. Flowers in April and May. The tubers abound in fecula and form a part of the winter provi¬ sion of the Kalmucs. VOL. VI. B