Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Annual or biennial herbs.

Stems: Stems erect, branched.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate or rarely opposite. Blades lyrate–pinnatifid. Margins of upper leaves toothed. Petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in usually bractless, terminal racemes, occasionally solitary. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic or rarely slightly irregular, showy. Calyx of 4 sepals, deciduous, erect, usually oblong, sometimes the inner 2 with gibbous bases that hold the nectar, somewhat saccate at base. Corolla of 4 petals, purple or yellow, fading white, entire to emarginate, long–clawed. 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, elongate, scarcely narrower than ovary; stigma capitate.

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; cylindrical; torulous; indehiscent; but breaking up into a series of segments at maturity; the upper part with 2–10 large seeds in 1 rows; separated by spongy transverse partitions; tapering above into a long persistent beak. Seeds 1 to numerous; globose; often becoming mucilaginous when wet; endosperm essentially absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: