Description :

• Annual or biennial herbs; stems leafy, with simple hairs
• Leaves usualIy lyrate-pinnatifid
• Inflorescences terminal, ebracteate racemes
• Sepals erect, spreading, inner two slightly saccate
• Petals small, obovate, clawed, yellow or white
• Stamens 6; filaments without appendages
• Nectaries 6, small
• Fruit a short, appressed siliqua; valves 3-nerved when young, nerves obscured when ripe; beak thick, 1- or 2-seeded
• Seeds in 1 row, ovoid, brown; cotyledons folded longitudinally around incumbent radicle
• x = 7

Nomenclature:

• *Hirschfeldia Moench
  • Moench: 264 (1794)
  • Schulz: 339 (1936)
  • Tutin: 342 (1964)
  • Marais: 11 (1970)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 2, Mediterranean and Socotra
• Southern Africa : Species 1: * Hirschfeldia incana (L.) Lagr.-Foss., introduced and recorded as rare escape in Western Cape