Fine-leaf fumitory

Fumaria parviflora, the small-flowered fumitory or Indian fumitory, is a slender, much-branched annual herb in the Papaveraceae family (Fumariaceae sensu lato), native to a broad swathe of Europe, North Africa and temperate Asia and now naturalised as a cool-season weed across much of the world. Plants reach 10 to 40 centimetres tall, with delicate, glaucous, finely two- to four-pinnately divided leaves whose ultimate segments are very narrow, almost linear. From late winter through spring the stems carry short, dense racemes of tiny tubular zygomorphic flowers, each only 4 to 6 millimetres long with four petals that are dull white to pale pinkish white, distinctly tipped with dark blackish-purple at the apex. The fruit is a small, rounded, one-seeded indehiscent nutlet bearing a small central crest. The species favours cultivated and disturbed ground, fallow fields, vineyards and waste places on dry, well-drained soils, and is locally weedy in cereal crops.