Annual or perennial herbs sometimes woody at the base, hairless or with branched hairs. Leaves mostly fleshy, waxy blue, often large and variously divided. Flowers small with white petals; stamens usually with a tooth-like protrusion. Fruit a silicula, stalked (gynophore), with 2 transverse joints forming a lower sterile segment and an upper segment round with a single hanging seed.
Seed.
Several species are grown as vegetables, eaten as boiled, blanched shoots.
Inner stamens with toothed filaments cf. Aubrieta; upper segment of pendulous fruit rounded and with single seed; style absent.
About 20 species from Canary Islands to W Asia.
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.
