[2] This delicate looking plant is a hairless annual (or occasionally perennial) up to a metre tall with weak, often pinkish, clambering stems.

The leaves are pale to medium green, doubly compound, the leaflets being well-stalked and divided into three to five sub-leaflets, and ending in a branching tendril.

[7] This species is known from several countries in western Europe, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal and Norway.

It grows in most counties in Britain especially the more western ones, but is absent from Orkney, Shetland and the Outer Hebrides and rare in Ireland.

It grows well in impoverished soil under bracken, perhaps because it flowers early in the year before the fronds develop fully.