Home
Herbs perennial, rarely annual, biennial (or subshrubs with woody stems). Trichomes simple, forked, stellate, malpighiaceous, or dendritic, stalked or sessile, often more than 1 kind present. Stems erect or ascending, sometimes prostrate, leafy or leafless and plants scapose. Basal leaves petiolate, often rosulate, simple, entire or toothed, rarely lobed. Cauline leaves petiolate or sessile, cuneate or auriculate at base, entire or dentate, sometimes absent. Racemes bracteate or ebracteate, elongated or not in fruit. Fruiting pedicels slender, erect, ascending, or divaricate. Sepals ovate, oblong, or elliptic, base of lateral pair not saccate or subsaccate, margin usually membranous. Petals yellow, white, pink, purple, orange (or rarely red); blade obovate, spatulate, oblong, oblanceolate, orbicular, or linear, apex obtuse, rounded, or rarely emarginate; claw obscurely to strongly differentiated from blade. Stamens 6, tetradynamous; filaments dilated or not at base; anthers ovate or oblong, obtuse at apex. Nectar glands 1, 2, or 4, distinct or confluent and subtending bases of all stamens; median glands present or absent; lateral glands toothlike, semiannular, or annular. Ovules 4 to numerous per ovary. Fruit dehiscent, silicles or rarely siliques, ovate, elliptic, oblong, orbicular, ovoid, globose, lanceolate, or linear, latiseptate or terete, sometimes spirally twisted; valves distinctly or obscurely veined, glabrous or pubescent; replum rounded; septum complete, membranous, translucent; style distinct or obsolete, glabrous; stigma capitate, entire or slightly 2-lobed. Seeds biseriate, wingless (or rarely winged), oblong, ovate, or orbicular, flattened; seed coat minutely reticulate, not mucilaginous when wetted; cotyledons accumbent.
Sep ascending or erect, blunt; pet yellow or white, rounded, emarginate, or rarely bifid, narrowed below to a claw, or in some spp. reduced or wanting; anthers short, oval or oblong; ovary ovoid, with 2–many ovules per locule; style short or none; stigma capitate; glands various; fr a silicle, seldom 5 times as long as wide; herbs with entire to dentate lvs, the hairs simple to branched or stellate. 350, mostly cool N. Hemisphere, 65 in S. Amer.
Annual or perennial herbs, tufted. Sepals dimorphic, erect to spreading. Stamens 4 or 6. Nectariferous glands various. Stigma bilobed. Silicula dehiscent, variously shaped; valves net-veined. Seeds many per locule, in 2 rows.
