Description:

• Annual or perennial herbs, sometimes woody at base, with simple hairs
• Leaves petiolate; basally usually rosulate, pinnatisect or pinnatifid; stem leaves few, sessile, usually cuneate
• Inflorescences terminal, many-flowered racemes
• Sepals erect, spreading, equal or inner pair slightly saccate
• Petals obovate, clawed, yellow
• Stamens 6; filaments without appendages
• Nectaries at base of long stamens shortly ligulate
• Fruit a linear or linear-lanceolate siliqua, compressed, dehiscent with short, seedless beak; valves 1-nerved, flat; stigma shallowly 2-lobed
• Seeds many, in 2 rows, ovoid; cotyledons longitudinally folded around incumbent radicle
• x = 7, 9, 10, 11, 13 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Diplotaxis DC.
  • Candolle: 628 (1821)
  • Candolle: 221 (1824)
  • Schulz: 342 (1936)
  • Phillips: 349 (1951)
  • Heywood: 334 (1964)
  • Marais: 12 (1970)
  • Rich: 102 (1991)
  • Jonsell: 64 (1993)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 27, Mediterranean and central Europe, some extending eastwards into India
• Southern Africa: Species 1: *Diplotaxis muralis (L.) DC., introduced and widely naturalised