Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Annual, biennial, or perennial herbs, glabrous to sparsely hirsute with simple hairs.

Stems:

Roots: Sometimes rhizomatous or stoloniferous.

Leaves: Leaves simple or compound. Alternate, basal and usually cauline. Margins entire to pinnately compound. Petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: 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 to purple, obovate to spatulate. Stamens 6 and tetradynamous, rarely 4 and equal in length; anthers ovate, oblong, or linear, obtuse at apex. 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 or occasionally absent; stigma capitate or rarely decurrent, entire or 2-lobed.

Fruit: Linear silique; erect; slightly compressed parallel to the septum; the valves opening elastically from base; rolling up after dehiscence; the septum margin extending partially over the valvular area. Seeds in a single series per cell; plump; longer than wide; wingless.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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