Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Annuals, biennials, or perennials; (stoloniferous or with woody caudex); not scapose; glabrous or pubescent, trichomes simple, mixed with stalked, 1–3-forked ones.

Stems: Stems erect, ascending, or decumbent, unbranched or branched distally, (usually glabrous distally).

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate basal and cauline. Basal rosulate. Margins of basal leaves entire, toothed, or pinnately lobed; cauline blade margins usually entire or dentate, rarely lyrate. Petiolate, sessile, or subsessile. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in racemes (few- to several-flowered), not elongated in fruit. fruiting pedicels ascending, divaricate, or slightly reflexed, slender. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx of 4 sepals; sepals erect or ascending, usually oblong (or ovate), (lateral pair sometimes saccate or subsaccate basally). Corolla of 4 petals; petals white, lavender, or purplish [pink, purple], obovate, spatulate, or oblanceolate, claw differentiated from blade or not, (apex obtuse or emarginate). Stamens 6, slightly tetradynamous; filaments not dilated basally; anthers oblong or ovate, (apex obtuse). Ovary superior; ovules 15–80 per ovary; style obsolete or distinct, to 1 mm; stigma capitate.

Fruit: Siliques dehiscent; shortly stipitate or subsessile; linear; smooth or somewhat torulose; terete (cylindrical) or latiseptate; valves (papery); each not veined or midvein prominent or obscure; glabrous; replum rounded; septum complete. Seeds usually uniseriate; plump or flattened; not winged or margined; oblong; ovoid; or ellipsoid; seed coat (minutely reticulate); mucilaginous or not when wetted; cotyledons usually accumbent; rarely incumbent.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: