Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Annual or biennial herbs, ± pubescent with dendritically branched hairs, sometimes also with simple or stalked glandular hairs.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves compound (pinnate) or simple (and pinnately lobed). Alternate or rarely opposite. Petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in many-branched racemes. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic or rarely slightly irregular. Calyx of 4 sepals, deciduous, erect, usually oblong, sometimes the inner 2 with gibbous bases that hold the nectar. Corolla of 4 petals, yellow or whitish, less than 3 mm long, entire to emarginate, rarely lobed or fibriate, usually with an elongate claw. Stamens (2–4)6(–16), tetradynamous, 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; style short or absent; stigma capitate or rarely decurrent, entire or 2-lobed.

Fruit: Capsules divided into 2 cells by the usually thin and membranous septum; elongate (at least 3 times as long as wide) and referred to as a silique; silique linear or clavate; the valves ± distinctly 1–nerved; fruit dehiscent. Seeds in 1–2 rows per cell; brown to yellowish; ellipsoid [Nagata; 1987]; often becoming mucilaginous when wet; endosperm essentially absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: