Common Fumitory

It is an herbaceous annual plant that grows weakly erect and scrambling, with stalks about 10–50 cm (3.9–19.7 in) long. It has slender green leaves. Its pink 7–9 mm (0.28–0.35 in) flowers appear from April to October in the northern hemisphere, or May to September in the UK. They are two lipped and spurred, with sepals running a quarter the length of the petals. The plant commonly has more than 20 and up to 60 flowers per spike. The fruit is an achene containing one seed. It is approximately globular, slightly wider than high and with an apical notch. It contains alkaloids, potassium salts, and tannins and is also a source of fumaric acid.

It is native to temperate regions of North Africa, Europe and parts of Western Asia.

Range. It is found in North Africa, within Macaronesia, Canary Islands, Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia. Within Western Asia it is found in the Caucasus, Cyprus, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Siberia, Syria and Turkey. In eastern Europe, it is found within Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine. In middle Europe, it is in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Hungary, Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia and Switzerland. In northern Europe, in Denmark, Ireland, Norway, Sweden and United Kingdom. In southeastern Europe, within Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Italy, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia. Also in southwestern Europe, it is found in France, Portugal and Spain. It is common in Australia where it was introduced.

Usage of this plant as medicine began in Europe in the late Middle Ages, although it was known since antiquity. In 17th century Europe it was publicised as good for the eyes (due to remarks by Pliny and later Olivier de Serres that rubbing its juice in one's eyes caused excessive tearing). The most common traditional uses were as a digestive aid and a diuretic, but various folk traditions throughout Europe ascribed to it a multitude of uses: constipation, cystitis, arteriosclerosis, rheumatism, arthritis, as a blood purifier, for hypoglycaemia, infections, and possibly to cleanse the kidneys. In Sicily and perhaps elsewhere it was used to treat skin blemishes, and in Britain into the modern era as an eyewash to treat conjunctivitis. Since 1963, it has been marketed as a herbal medicine in France. As of 2011, herbal products made from this plant are legally sold in various forms in Austria, Germany, France and Spain. Products may be legally sold in the British market (it is on the British General Sales List), although no products were sold there as of 2011. In the European Union as a whole, marketing of the plant is not necessarily legal: it has been rejected from the Community List by the Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products due to the lack of toxicology studies. …

The "smoky" or "fumy" origin of its name comes from the translucent color of its flowers, giving them the appearance of smoke or of hanging in smoke, and the slightly gray-blue haze color of its foliage, also resembling smoke coming from the ground, especially after morning dew. The plant was already called fūmus terrae (smoke of the earth) in the early 13th century, and two thousand years ago, Dioscorides wrote in De Materia Medica (Περὶ ὕλης ἰατρικῆς) and Pliny the Elder in Naturalis Historia that rubbing the eyes with the sap or latex of the plant causes tears, like acrid smoke (fūmus) does to the eyes. Its Greek name is kapnos (καπνός, for smoke) and the name fumewort now applies mostly to the genus Corydalis, especially the similar looking Corydalis solida (formerly Fumaria bulbosa), which was thought to belong to the same genus as fumitory.