Ceratocapnos claviculata or climbing corydalis is a weak scrambling plant in the Fumariaceae

Fumariaceae

Fumariaceae is a family of about 575 species of herbaceous plants in 20 genera, native to the Northern Hemisphere and South Africa.-Flower shape:Plants in the fumitory family are easily recognised by their peculiar flowers with two dissimilar pairs of...

 family. It is endemic to Europe, growing mostly near the Atlantic fringe.

Distribution

Although this species is known from several countries in western Europe, a large proportion of the global population is found in the United Kingdom. It grows in most counties in Britain especially the more western ones, but is absent from Orkney, Shetland and the Outer Hebrides

Outer Hebrides

The Outer Hebrides also known as the Western Isles and the Long Island, is an island chain off the west coast of Scotland. The islands are geographically contiguous with Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, one of the 32 unitary council areas of Scotland...

 and rare in Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

.

Description

This delicate looking plant is a hairless annual

Annual plant

An annual plant is a plant that usually germinates, flowers, and dies in a year or season. True annuals will only live longer than a year if they are prevented from setting seed...

 (or occasionally perennial

Perennial plant

A perennial plant or simply perennial is a plant that lives for more than two years. The term is often used to differentiate a plant from shorter lived annuals and biennials. The term is sometimes misused by commercial gardeners or horticulturalists to describe only herbaceous perennials...

) up to a metre tall with weak, often pinkish, clambering stems. The leaves are pale to medium green, doubly compound, the leaflets being well-stalked and divided into three to five sub-leaflets, and ending in a branching tendril. The flowers are small, pale creamy-yellow, in short axilliary spikes. Each flower is elongated and tubular with a lip and spur and stamens in two bundles. The seed pods are short, usually narrowing between the two seeds.

Ecology

Climbing corydalis tends to grow on the edges of woodlands and previously wooded sites. It prefers acid soils, sandy or peaty, and usually in sheltered and half shaded positions. It is sometimes abundant in disturbed parts of recently cleared plantations or woods, clambering over wood debris. It grows well in impoverished soil under bracken

Bracken

Bracken are several species of large, coarse ferns of the genus Pteridium. Ferns are vascular plants that have alternating generations, large plants that produce spores and small plants that produce sex cells . Brackens are in the family Dennstaedtiaceae, which are noted for their large, highly...

, perhaps because it flowers early in the year before the fronds develop fully.
It is the food plant for the weevil

Weevil

A weevil is any beetle from the Curculionoidea superfamily. They are usually small, less than , and herbivorous. There are over 60,000 species in several families, mostly in the family Curculionidae...

, Procas granulicollis

Procas granulicollis

Procas granulicollis is a beetle in the family Curculionidae, the true weevils. It was first described in 1848 from a specimen collected in Cumbria and has since been found at a number of other sites in Britain, mainly in the west...

and the beetle

Beetle

Coleoptera is an order of insects commonly called beetles. The word "coleoptera" is from the Greek , koleos, "sheath"; and , pteron, "wing", thus "sheathed wing". Coleoptera contains more species than any other order, constituting almost 25% of all known life-forms...

, Sirocalodes mixtus.