(Prain) Fedde
Description
Corydalis sikkimensis is an Eastern Himalayan endemic distributed across the high mountains of Sikkim and adjacent India, eastern Nepal, Bhutan and southern Xizang (China), with GBIF documenting 18 georeferenced collections from these four countries (IN, NP, BT, CN). It occupies the subalpine to lower alpine belt, typically between 3000 and 4000 m, growing in moist shaded conifer and Rhododendron forest margins, on humus-rich banks, beside snow-melt rivulets and among damp rocks. The photographed plant from Gogona in central Bhutan at about 3200 m in May illustrates its phenology, flowering with the early summer monsoon when soils are saturated and light is filtered through the forest canopy.
It is a slender, glabrous, glaucous perennial herb arising from a small fibrous-rooted or shortly tuberous rootstock. The erect to ascending stems bear thin, several-times ternately or pinnately divided leaves, the ultimate segments ovate to obovate and often shallowly lobed, the lower leaves long-petiolate. Flowers are borne in lax terminal racemes subtended by small entire or toothed bracts; each zygomorphic flower comprises four petals, the upper petal produced into a slender, somewhat curved or decurved spur, the inner petals connate at the apex and crested. The corolla is typically blue to purplish-blue. The fruit is a narrow dehiscent capsule containing small black shining seeds.
A member of the large and taxonomically intricate genus Corydalis (Papaveraceae, subfamily Fumarioideae), the species belongs to the predominantly Sino-Himalayan radiation centred on the eastern Himalaya and Hengduan Shan. Like many congeners it is pollinated by long-tongued bumblebees attracted to the spurred corolla, and its alkaloid-rich tissues are characteristic of the family. Though restricted in range, it occurs in remote, little-disturbed high-elevation habitats and is not presently regarded as threatened, but its narrow endemism makes it sensitive to climate-driven shifts in the alpine zone.
Author: (Prain) Fedde · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China Vol. 7, Flora of Bhutan Vol. 1, Flora of Nepal, Monograph of the genus Corydalis (Lidén & Zetterlund)