Family: Brassicaceae
Family description:
Annual to perennial herbs, rarely small shrubs. Leaves alternate, exstipulate. Flowers usually hermaphrodite, actinomorphic, hypogynous. Sepals 4, free, in 2 decussate pairs. Petals 4, rarely absent, free, clawed, imbricate or contorted, alternating with the sepals. Stamens usally 6, rarely 4, 2 or 0, tetradynamous (an outer pair with short filaments, and two inner pairs, one posterior and one anterior, with long filaments); filaments sometimes winged or with a tooth-like appendage. Nectarial glands of various sizes, shapes, colours and dispositions around the base of the stamens and ovary. Ovary of 2 carpels, syncarpous, with 2 parietal placentas, usually bilocular through the formation of a membranous false septum by the union of outgrowths of the placentas; sometimes transversely plurilocular. Stigma capitate to bilobed. Fruit usually a dehiscent capsule opening by 2 valves from below, called a siliqua when at least 3 times as long as wide, or a silicula if less than 3 times as long as wide; sometimes indehiscent, breaking into 1-seeded portions or not; rarely transversely articulate with dehiscent and indehiscent segments, sometimes divided at maturity into 1-seeded portions (lomentum). Seeds in 1 or 2 rows in each loculus.There is great diversity in the form and structure of the fruit in this family, often affording an easy means of identification, especially in genera which do not posses a normal siliqua or silicula.