Greek Arabis—Arabia.
Annual, biennial or perennial herbs. Hairs unbranched, forked, stellate or absent. Leaves simple, entire sometimes lobed or toothed. Flowers in terminal clusters; sepals and petals 4, the inner sepals bagged at the base; petals mostly white, occasionally pink or purple. Fruit a siliqua with flat valves; seeds in one row in each chamber and often winged.
Often mat-forming, grown as edging plants and in rock gardens etc, generally in cool-climate areas; the species and cultivars grown in southeastern Australia require taxonomic investigation.
Cultivars are probably the result of hybridisation and may be difficult to assign to a species.
A. blepharophylla Hook. & Arn. from C California is occasionally offered; it has fragrant rosy purple flowers, oblong to spoon-shaped, toothed or entire leaves, and fruits 2.5-4 cm long; the white-flowered A. alpina L. and the white-flowered and grey-leaved A. caucasica Schlechtend. are also sometimes offered, both have toothed leaves.
Division, seeds or cuttings.
Fruit usually more than 4 times as long as wide, valves nerved, soon shed; sepals not overlapping.
About 120 species, mostly northern temperate from N America and Eurasia to tropical Africa.
Source: (1997). Brassicaceae. In: . Horticultural Flora of South-eastern Australia. Volume 2. Flowering plants. Dicotyledons. Part 1. The identification of garden and cultivated plants. University of New South Wales Press.
