White Ramping-fumitory - Fumaria capreolata

Medium-tall robust clambering plant. Leaf segments oblong or wedge shaped. Racemes long-stalked. Flowers creamy-white with a reddish black apex. 10 to 14 mm long, upper petal compressed with upturned margins. Sepals toothed. Fruit on recurved stalks, 2 mm, smooth with faint keel. There are two sub species (subspecies babingtonii and subspecies capreolata).

Other fumitories

Ref. key in Stace (3).   This is very difficult genus that can't be identified with confidence from a photo.  The species are all very similar, but also variable within a species.  Determination depends on fine differences in flower, sepal and bract shape and size.  In addition, Stace says 'it is essential to base determinations on well-grown non-shaded material in early or mid flowering season.  Late or shade-grown plants may be very atypical, with short paler petals, longer narrower petals, relatively long bracts,  and less or more recurved fruiting pedicels. . . '  

Either obtain confirmation from a County Recorder before submitting a record, or submit detailed images showing key features.  We recommend that you take and retain a specimen; the County Recorder may wish to see this for confirmation. 

Hedges, scrub, waste places.

Flowers May to September.

Annual.

Scattered localities throughout, but most frequent in coastal Wales and the south west of England.

Rare in Leicestershire and Rutland, introduced. The Elmesthorpe record in 2016 was the first confirmed record of this species in VC55. It was not recorded in The Flora of Leicestershire published in 1988.

It was on the 2011 VC55 Rare Plant Register (Jeeves, 2011) but is not on the current RPR (Hall & Woodward, 2022) because records are of introduced plants