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; suborbicular silicles usually 4–5.5 mm long. 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.