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Herbs annual, biennial, or perennial, rarely subshrubs or shrubs. Trichomes stellate, dendritic, or stalked forked, sometimes mixed with fewer simple ones, rarely primarily simple. Stems simple or branched apically. Basal leaves petiolate, rosulate, simple, often entire, sometimes dentate, rarely lyrate-pinnatifid. Cauline leaves sessile and auriculate, sagittate, or amplexicaul, very rarely petiolate, entire or dentate. Racemes ebracteate or rarely bracteate throughout or only basally, sometimes in panicles, elongated in fruit. Fruiting pedicels erect, ascending, divaricate, or reflexed. Sepals ovate or oblong, base of lateral pair saccate or not, margin membranous. Petals white, pink, or purple; blade spatulate, oblong, or oblanceolate, rarely obovate, apex obtuse or emarginate; claw shorter than sepals. Stamens 6, tetradynamous; filaments usually not dilated at base; anthers ovate, oblong, or linear, obtuse at apex. Nectar glands confluent, subtending bases of all stamens; median glands sometimes toothlike and free, rarely absent; lateral glands semiannular or annular. Ovules 12-110 per ovary. Fruit dehiscent siliques, linear, latiseptate, sessile or rarely shortly stipitate; valves papery, with an obscure or prominent midvein, smooth or torulose; replum rounded; septum complete, membranous, translucent, veinless; style obsolete or distinct; stigma capitate, entire or slightly 2-lobed. Seeds uniseriate or biseriate, winged or margined, oblong or orbicular, flattened; seed coat smooth or minutely reticulate, not mucilaginous when wetted; cotyledons accumbent.
Annual, biennial or perennial small to medium-sized herbs, with a taproot and often unbranched or little branched stems. Hairs usually present, very often stellate or otherwise branched, also simple. Racemes terminal, ebracteate, ± corymbose, mostly with small flowers, in fruit cylindrical and elongate, dense to lax. Sepals not spreading, the lateral ones sometimes saccate. Petals white, cream, pale blue or violet, spathulate to clawed. Stamens with linear filaments. Nectaries usually as prominent glands outside and ± around the lateral stamens, and as a smaller simple or bifid gland outside each pair of median stamens. Ovary narrowly cylindrical, usually with a very short style and flat stigma; ovules numerous. Fruit a siliqua, dehiscent, linear, flattened; valves thin with a fine midnerve. Seeds uniseriate, ovoid, finely reticulate, not mucilaginous.
Sep erect or spreading, the outer sometimes saccate at base; pet white, yellowish, or pink, narrowly spatulate to oblong or obovate; anthers oblong; ovary cylindric; ovules numerous; style short and scarcely differentiated; stigma truncate; fr linear, elongate, flat or subterete, the valves often with a midvein or reticulately veined; seeds flattened, often winged; annual to perennial herbs, the basal lvs petioled, usually simple, the cauline smaller and usually sessile; pubescence variable but usually present. 180, N. Hemisphere.
