Focus on Fumitory

Here's a plant I just can't get in focus.  The macro setting on my camera just hates the arrangement of the flower petals (which refuse to conform to the botanical ideal of a flower) and instead latches on to the leaves. The flowers are cylindrical, vary in colour from one end to the other and are reputed to be pollinated solely by the increasingly rare turtle dove (although they are also self fertilising as a backstop). It is a member of the poppy family Papaveraceae.

They caught my eye on my wanderings, and I adopted my usual practice of snapping them on camera for an identity parade back in the comfort of my own home.  Only every shot was out of focus.  I was fuming!

So why is this called fumitory (Latin: smoke, earth)?

Here are some of the common explantions:

1. As Pliny famously noted: if you rubbed it on your eyes it had a similar effect to being engulfed in smoke.
2. As you approach it has the ephemeral appearance of a puff of smoke.
3. The leaves are wispy like smoke.
4. If you ease the root out of the ground a smell of smoke is released.
5. It reproduces through the interaction of smoke and earth, not by seed. (Really?)
6. (Tied in with 5)  This plant is held to be one of the first to appear after the ground has been scorched by fire.

Answer: You decide, but I don't think 5 is on.

There is a yellow version too grown in gardens as yellow corydalis.  I happened across some at Inveresk Lodge Garden just the other day.

After my recent experience with its wild sibling this was as near as I dared get to the flower.