Most of the tuberous Corydalis have headed back underground for the year. A notable exception is Corydalis vittae, which dances to it’s own tune and is still in seed production mode. My focus is now turning more and more to the Dicentras and herbaceous Corydalis. The Dicentras are in fine fettle, and the Corydalis are now beginning to catch up, having had a slow start this year due to all the peculiar weather. The main task in hand, concerning tuberous Corydalis, is to finish sowing the seeds and to dig up the tubers. As is their way, various Corydalis seedlings (mostly Corydalis solida) pop up here and there around the garden; I keep an eye out for any interesting or useful variations, dig them up and grow them on with the rest of the collection. I featured a few promising seedlings in a Six on Saturday post a while back.
The main features I’m looking for in the chance seedlings are: any particularly early or late flowering individuals that might extend the flowering season; new colour variations; any bi-coloured flowers; decent white flowered individuals seem to be in short supply. On spotting something that’s worth growing on, I stick a plant label with a description next to it (‘Early Red’ for example) and dig it up when it dies back. I’ve taken a few photos of my finds.
Here are a couple I dug up at the weekend:
Here’s one in my hand to give an idea of the size…
… and a couple of close ups…
The top, showing where the shoot grows from. 
The bottom, showing the remains of the roots
While I was in a digging mood, I unearthed a couple of different aged tubers:
At the top of the photo is a little plant in the second year of it’s life, below is one that has formed this year. You can see that the tubers sit surprisingly deep in the soil, even in the first year of their life.
Over the coming weeks, I’ll pot on these finds as well as sorting out the various Corydalis already in the collection. Once that’s done, they can all sit tight undisturbed until the spring.
There’s lots to do, so the blog posts are short and sweet at the moment. That’s all for now, thanks for reading!
How long would you say from that first leaf/year stage to flowering size?
The three year old tuber is flowering size, so from the first year tuber, two more years. I’ve found that to be a fairly standard timescale for C. solida and malkensis.