Description :

• Mostly annual, branched herbs, with branched, stellate, glandular or simple hairs
• Leaves 2- or 3-pinnatisect
• Inflorescences racemose, many-flowered, ebracteate
• Flowers small, inconspicuous
• Sepals erect, not saccate
• Petals yellowish, usually smaller than sepals
• Stamens 6; filaments without appendages
• Nectaries narrow, lateral ones horseshoe-shaped, united with median ones
• Fruit a short, linear siliqua; valves rounded, 1-nerved, net-veined; style very short; stigma capitate
• Seeds elliptic or oblong, in 1 or 2 rows, small; cotyledons incumbent
• x = 7 (aneuploids, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Descurainia Webb & Berthel.
  • Webb & Berthelot: 72 (1836)
  • Schulz: 649 (1936)
  • Ball: 266 (1964)
  • Marais: 117 (1970)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 55, mostly North America, some from South America, Europe and Asia
• Southern Africa : Species 1: * Descurainia sophia (L.) Webb ex Prantl, naturalised in arid areas, only few times recorded in Gauteng, Northern and Eastern Cape