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 obovate, spatulate to oblanceolate, rarely nearly linear, 3–7.8(–12) cm long, (0.3–)1–2(–2.5) cm wide. Apex obtuse to acute. Surfaces glabrate, blades thick and somewhat fleshy. Margins usually coarsely serrate or crenate, primarily in upper ⅔ of leaf. Petiolate. 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; elongate (at least 3 times as long as wide) and referred to as a silique; flattened at right angles to the septum; broadly elliptic to suborbicular silicles usually 4–5.5 mm long apex notched; the surface inconspicuously roughened. Seeds 1 to numerous; pale reddish brown; narrowly obovoid; compressed; 1.9–2.5 mm long; 0.8–1.3 mm wide; often becoming mucilaginous when wet; endosperm essentially absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Indigenous to coastal sites and low elevation; dry; steep; rocky slopes near the coast.

Elevation Range: 0–240 m.