Corydalis solida is one of the first tubers up in spring and one of the quickest to bow out. In March, at the same moment as the large flowering crocus, it sends up dense little spikes of spurred flowers over ferny blue green foliage, rose pink and flashed with white, then by early summer the whole plant has slipped back underground without leaving a single tired leaf behind. Beth Evans is the one we grow.
When Does Corydalis Solida Flower
In March, with the large crocus. That puts it among the earliest real colour in the garden, opening low and pink while the borders are still mostly bare, and because it stands only about twenty centimetres it wants a place at the front of a bed or along a path edge where it will not be lost. Each slender stem carries a whole spike of little spurred flowers.
Why Does It Vanish After Flowering
Because it is meant to. Corydalis solida is a spring ephemeral, which means it does the whole of its year in a few weeks of early spring and then retreats to a dormant tuber for the rest of it, leaf and flower gone by the start of summer. The first time it happens people think they have lost it. They have not. It is simply the tidiest naturaliser there is, with no worn foliage to work around afterwards.
Where Should You Plant It
It came off a woodland floor, so give it one. That means the foot of a hedge, the shade of a deciduous shrub, or a cool pocket in the rockery, ground with leaf mould worked through it that holds a little damp into summer. The trick of the plant is that it flowers and feeds early, before the leaves overhead shut out the light. Sun is fine if the soil stays cool, and nothing grazes it.
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How Do You Plant It
Five centimetres down, five apart, tubers going in through the autumn. Plant a good number of them, because a scatter of a few disappears where fifty makes a drift worth crossing the garden for. Then leave it be. It seeds itself quietly about and fattens up year on year, and the name, corydalis, is simply Greek for a crested lark, after the spur on each little flower.
Plant These With Your Corydalis
Corydalis solida keeps good company in the woodland corner. Winter aconites open the year a few weeks ahead of it, the large crocus flowers at the very same moment in March, and chionodoxa carries the same low blue and pink on into April.
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