Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Annual or perennial herbs.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate or rarely opposite. Surfaces ± pubescent with appressed, branched hairs. Margins entire. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers usually bractless, in simple, terminal 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, white or occasionally pale purple. 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 1, very short; 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; compressed parallel to the septum; orbicular to obovate or ovate; the style persistent. Seeds 1–8 per cell; often becoming mucilaginous when wet; endosperm essentially absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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