Plants often fetid when crushed; not scapose; glabrous or pubescent. Stems erect, unbranched or branched distally. Leaves basal and cauline; petiolate or sessile [subsessile]; basal (often withered in fruit), rosulate or not, petiolate [subsessile], margins entire, repand, dentate, or sinuate-dentate; cauline sessile, blade (base auriculate or sagittate), margins dentate, repand, or entire. Racemes (several-flowered), considerably elongated in fruit. Fruiting pedicels divaricate, (straight or slightly curved), slender. Flowers: sepals erect or ascending, ovate or oblong, (margins membranous); petals spatulate [oblong], claw differentiated or not from blade, (apex obtuse or emarginate); stamens slightly tetradynamous; filaments not dilated basally; anthers ovate, (apex obtuse); nectar glands (2 or 4), lateral, often 1 on each side of lateral stamen, median glands absent. Fruits silicles, sessile, oblong, obovate, obcordate, or suborbicular, (apex often notched), keeled, strongly angustiseptate; valves winged throughout or apically, glabrous; replum rounded; septum complete, (not veined); ovules 6-16 per ovary; style obsolete or not, (included in apical notch); stigma capitate. Seeds plump, not winged, ovoid; seed coat (coarsely reticulate, alveolate or concentrically striate), not mucilaginous when wetted; cotyledons accumbent. x = 7.
Sep ascending; pet white (in ours) to pink or blue, spatulate to obovate; short filaments flanked on each side by a semicircular gland; filaments slender, with ovate anthers; ovary ellipsoid to obovoid, somewhat flattened; style very short; frs orbicular to obovate or obcordate, strongly flattened contrary to the septum, distended over the seeds, keeled or winged at the margin, retuse at the summit; seeds normally 4 or more per locule; herbs, usually glabrous, with auriculate lvs. 75, mostly Eurasia.
Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.
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