Brassicaceae  

Annuals, biennials, or perennials, mostly herbs, rarely shrubby, glabrous or with simple or branched hairs. Leaves alternate, exstipulate, simple, entire to variously divided. Flowers usually ebracteate, in racemes, tetramerous, cruciform, bisexual, as a rule regular. Sepals 4 in two pairs, free, the inner pair often saccate. Petals 4, free, rarely absent, usually clawed. Stamens 6, tetradynamous - 2 short and 4-longer free. Nectaries at base of filaments, Ovary bicarpellary, syncarpous, unilocular but becoming 2-chambered because of a thin, membranous septum, usually many- ovuled on parietal placentation; style one with capitate or bilobed or sometimes decurrent stigma. Fruit capsular, elongate siliqua, or short silicula, usually dehiscing by 2-valves, or indehiscent nut-like or moniliform constricted breaking into one-seeded parts.