Perennials; (often loosely pulvinate or cespitose, caudex many-branched); not scapose; pubescent, trichomes stellate, short-stalked or sessile, mixed with coarser, stalked, forked, and simple ones. Stems erect to decumbent, branched basally, (slender). Leaves basal and cauline; petiolate or sessile [subsessile]; basal rosulate, petiolate, blade margins entire or dentate; cauline petiolate or sessile [subsessile], blade (base not auriculate), margins entire or dentate. Racemes (few-to several-flowered), elongated in fruit. Fruiting pedicels erect to divaricate, slender. Flowers: sepals erect, oblong, lateral pair saccate basally, (glabrous or pubescent); petals usually purple to violet, rarely white [pink], obovate [spatulate], (apex obtuse); stamens tetradynamous; filaments narrowly winged, (lateral pair with toothed appendage); anthers oblong [ovate]; nectar glands lateral, semi-annular, extrastaminal. Fruits siliques or, rarely, silicles, sessile, ellipsoid, [linear, oblong, or elliptic], not torulose, terete or latiseptate; valves each with distinct midvein, pubescent or, rarely, glabrous; replum rounded; septum usually complete, sometimes perforate; ovules 10-40 per ovary; (style persistent); stigma capitate. Seeds biseriate, flattened, not winged, ovoid [elliptical]; seed coat not mucilaginous when wetted; cotyledons accumbent.
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