Climbing fumitory

Fumaria capreolata, the climbing fumitory or white ramping fumitory, is a slender scrambling or weakly climbing annual herb in the family Papaveraceae (subfamily Fumarioideae) native to the Mediterranean basin and western Europe and naturalized in parts of North America, Australia, and New Zealand. The plant produces sprawling much-branched stems 30-100 cm long that climb over neighbouring vegetation by means of twining leaf petioles, which act as weak tendrils. The leaves are alternate, two- or three-times pinnately divided into small linear-oblong, flat, blue-green segments, giving the foliage a delicate fern-like appearance characteristic of the genus. The inflorescence is a many-flowered raceme borne opposite the leaves, with 6-20 flowers each 10-14 mm long. Each flower is bilaterally symmetric and two-lipped, creamy-white at first and ageing to deep purplish-pink at the apex, with a short blunt spur at the base of the upper petal and a dark blackish-red blotch on the inner lower petal. After fertilization the flower stalks bend down, presenting the small globose to subglobose, slightly compressed, smooth nutlet fruits, each 2-3 mm across and containing a single seed. The species inhabits hedge banks, walls, cultivated ground, and shaded waste places.