A short and robust perennial, 10-20 cm tall, with simple stern, glabrous, ± glaucous; rootstock slender, prostrate, covered above with withered leaf bases. Radical leaves long stalked, with usually a trisect (lobed) terminal lamina, early withering; petiole 7-12 cm long, weak; lamina 5-10 cm in diam., ± fleshy, some-what reniform, 3(-5) lobed; lobes suborbicular, narrowed below, margin crenulate to shortly lobulate, often broader than long; cauline leaves 1-3 verticillate, like the lamina of radical leaves, sessile or subsessile. Racemes short, simple (rarely branched below), 3-5 (-7) cm long, apparently looking as if arising from the trisect lamina of leaf, densely 20-25 flowered, hardly elongating in fruit. Flowers large, (15-) 18-25 mm long, including spur about half as long and slightly down-curved at base; bracts spathulate or obovate-lanceolate, green or leafy, gradually becoming smaller above, lower usually 10-15 mm long, 4-6 mm broad, almost entire. Pedicel 5-10 mm long, spreading, stout, deflexed in fruit. Sepals c. 2 mm long, ovate, membranous, entire to slightly denticulate below, acute. Upper petal broad, obtuse, margin slightly expanded, dorsal ridge (wing) short, narrow, entire to 1-2 denticulate; lower petal slightly saccate at base, slightly narrow, about as long as the lamina of the upper petal, somewhat deflexed. Capsule ellipsoid-orbicular, 15-20 (-25) mm long, 10-15 (-20) mm broad, many seeded; style 1-2 mm long, curved at apex with broad stigma.

Fl. Per.: June-Aug.

Type: N. W. Himalayas, Kunawer, Chango, Royle (LIV).

Distribution: W. Tibet, Kashmir and Pakistan.

Variable in stature and fleshiness of leaves, and perhaps affected by dry and wet conditions. Corydalis crassissima Camb. is a slightly robust form of this species. In Chitral, the leaves are said to be edible. Fruits very much inflated, but tumid or somewhat inflated fruits are found in some other species of Corydalis also, especially the recently discovered Corydalis adiantifolia var. heterocarpa Jafri, which appears to be a good link between these two species.