Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennial herbs, pubescent with simple hairs.

Stems: Stems erect, (2–)3–5 dm long, branched, the branches usually ascending, finely puberulent, glabrate with age.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate or rarely opposite, variable, cauline ones in fascicles. Blades linear–lanceolate, 1–4 cm long. Margins pinnately lobed, serrate or entire. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers usually bractless in elongate racemes usually 4–10 cm long. 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; ca. 0.7–0.8 mm long, caducous. Petals vestigial or absent. Stamens 2; 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; broadly oblong–elliptic; 2.5–5 mm long; distinctly longer than wide; the apical notch shallow; the margins scarcely exceeding the short style. Seeds 1 to numerous; often becoming mucilaginous when wet; endosperm essentially absent; ca. 1.5 mm long.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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