Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Subshrubs 1.5–6 dm tall, pubescent with simple hairs.

Stems: Stems ascending to weakly erect, herbaceous for most of their length, glabrate.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate or rarely opposite. Blades linear 3–6 cm long, 0.3–0.4 cm wide, thick and somewhat fleshy. Apex acute to rounded. Surfaces glabrate. Margins usually coarsely serrate or crenate, primarily in upper ⅔ of leaf. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers usually bractless in 1 to several terminal racemes, sparsely to moderately puberulent. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic or rarely slightly irregular; white, pale yellow, or greenish, usually 2–3 mm long, sometimes absent. Calyx of 4 sepals, deciduous, erect, usually oblong, sometimes the inner 2 with gibbous bases that hold the nectar; green, ovate to elliptic, ca. 1–1.3 mm long, sparsely puberulent, margins white. Corolla of 4 petals, rarely absent, yellow, white, or lavender, entire to emarginate, rarely lobed or fimbriate, usually with an elongate claw; 1.2–1.6 mm long. Stamens 6, as long or nearly as long as petals, each with a gland at base, the inner 4 usually in pairs, sometimes connate at base in pairs; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, 2(4?)-carpellate, usually 2-celled by means of a false, but usually complete septum, rarely 1-celled, sessile or rarely stipitate; ovules 1 to numerous, borne on parietal placentas on replum margin at periphery of ovary wall, campylotropous or occasionally anatropous; styles short or essentially absent; stigma capitate.

Fruit: Capsules divided into 2 cells by the usually thin and membranous septum; and referred to as a silique; which are suborbicular; 3.5–4 mm long. Seeds 1 to numerous; often becoming mucilaginous when wet; endosperm essentially absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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