I neglected to take a habitat photograph for this species, but you can get an idea of its habitat and diminutive size from the E-Flora BC Photo Gallery -- in short, it's short, with plants I observed growing to about 8cm (3 in.), though it is known to reach 15cm. It is a species of wet to moist soils in alpine / subalpine / tundra areas, so this close-up photograph required saturating my jeans and jacket with water held by the bed of moss blanketing the small depression near the summit of the mountain.
Few-flowered corydalis or few-flowered fumewort is a species of northwestern North America and northeastern Asia (amphiberingian). It is thought to have originated in Asia with a subsequent dispersal into North America. A few minor quibbles with the linked Flora of North America account for the species: this plant was photographed at ~1750m / 5700 ft. (not 0-1100m as in the FNA material), and Pink Mountain is also southeast of the distribution map in the FNA. However, Pink Mountain is within the range for known localities in the E-Flora BC entry for Corydalis pauciflora (though it is absent as a point on the E-Flora BC map).
As noted in The Butterflies of Canada, Parnassius eversmanni, or Eversmann's parnassian, is a butterfly species with a distribution closely tied to that of Corydalis pauciflora.
How very sweet and delicate!
I like how the leaves and flower detail seem to "emerge" in this close up. A good photo...
Beautiful flower. Love seeing new species of genera I know from new places. As a Lepidoptera lover, I also appreciated the info re the butterfly connection. This link offers great pictures of an amazingly beautiful butterfly.
http://www.funet.fi/pub/sci/bio/life/insecta/lepidoptera/ditrysia/papilionoidea/papilionidae/parnassiinae/parnassius/index.html#eversmanni
A beautiful flower, totally new to me. And what a beautiful photo- Eric, you just keep getting better and better!
I subscribed to Botany Photo of the Day a few weeks ago and I am really enjoying the beautiful photos and learning each day with each new post. thank you!
Wow! My first thought was "That's a bilabiate corolla" What a nerd I am! My second thought was of how wonderful nature is to create such a flower design, beautiful in form and beautiful in function, soon to open itself up for pollination :-) Wonderful photo! I stared at it for a long time. Thank you very much.
Thank you so much for this and all the botany photos of the day. Seeing so many species I'm unfamiliar with has become such an enjoyable treat that it takes me a little by surprise when I see one I know. But it's very seldom that your wonderful descriptions send me on a word quest like "amphiberingian" did today. Of course, when I found out what it meant, I looked carefully at the word and thought, "Of course!" Thank you.
Hello from Lamar, Colorado,
Absolutely fabulous photo! We have Corydalis aurea (golden smoke) here in southeastern Colorado and enjoyed seeing a northern relative of it. Thanks for the efforts on your photos, Daniel, appreciated by many more of us than you'll ever know.
so worth getting soaked for - a properly excellent photo of a properly fab bit of nature
Isubscribed to Botany Photo of the Day two months ago.I would like to thank you sending me these beautiful photos. Really I am learning new aplants with each new post. thank you!
What a fab photo!
Stunning.
Thank you.
Daniel,
Absolutely stunning photograph. STUNNING. Worth the wet jeans and jacket . . . thanks for sacrificing your comfort for science and our pleasure.
I thoroughly enjoy BPOTD, and have turned on many plant-o-phile friends to this delight. I am sorry my father in law, the late Richard A. Howard (botanist, Harvard) is not alive to enjoy this. He would have loved every photograph and every entry.
Thank you!
Best,
Love
spring's vigor hides in sodden marshes
then brightly disgorges dense flowers
towering crags impassively steep
yet fluent like liqueur swished in the mouth
han yu 768-824
this is just lovely one of your best daniel
the internet has a lot of infomation and images
scroll all the way down the page for
species of the day bon jour
Gorgeous photo! I love the way you used the shallow dof. Beautiful composition.
And, of course, now I want to go out and find this plant myself!
My first thought, upon seeing this picture, was of the creature in the movie, Alien...
I KNEW it reminded me of *something* but couldn't figure it out. Thanks, Doug, you nailed it! ;)
That is a gorgeous photo.
But I am puzzled...do you have yet another quibble with FNA? Currently the family listed here is Papaveraceae...FNA has Fumariaceae, which is what I guessed upon viewing the photo, having spent some time in the mountains today looking for Dicentra uniflora.
Last I heard Fumariaceae had been sunk into Papaveraceae.