Annuals, biennials, or perennials; (short-lived, caudex poorly developed, usually not woody); not scapose; glabrous or pubescent. Stems usually erect, rarely ascending, unbranched or branched, (often glaucous, glabrous distally). Leaves basal and cauline; petiolate or sessile; basal rosulate or not, petiolate or sessile, blade margins entire or dentate to lyrate-pinnatifid; cauline usually sessile, rarely petiolate, blade (base usually auriculate or amplexicaul), margins entire or dentate, pinnatifid, or pinnatisect. Racemes (rarely with a terminal cluster of sterile flowers, usually ebracteate, sometimes bracteate), usually elongated in fruit. Fruiting pedicels usually divaricate-ascending, rarely erect or suberect, slender or stout. Flowers (sometimes zygomorphic); sepals erect, (calyx often urceolate or campanulate), both pairs often saccate basally; petals white, yellow, pink, purple, or brownish, oblong to ovate, (narrow and margins crisped or channeled, or broad and margins neither crisped nor channeled), claw poorly differentiated from blade or distinct, (apex rounded); stamens usually in 3 unequal pairs, rarely tetradynamous; filaments not dilated basally, (adaxial pair longest, frequently connate and anthers sterile or partially sterile, sometimes all filaments distinct and all anthers fertile); anthers linear to oblong; nectar glands confluent. Fruits subsessile or shortly stipitate, linear, torulose or smooth, usually latiseptate, rarely subterete (flattened); valves each with prominent or obscure midvein, usually glabrous, rarely pubescent; replum rounded; septum complete; ovules (10-)12-120 per ovary; style distinct or obsolete; stigma entire or 2-lobed. Seeds uniseriate, usually flattened, rarely plump, usually winged, rarely not winged, oblong, ovoid, orbicular, or suborbicular; seed coat (smooth or minutely reticulate), not mucilaginous when wetted; cotyledons usually accumbent, rarely obliquely so.
