Description :

• Annual or perennial herbs or suffrutices, glabrous or with simple hairs
• Leaves with lower ones pinnatisect, rarely entire; upper leaves small, linear
• Inflorescence branched, racemose
• Sepals erect, spreading, inner two slightly saccate
• Petals shortly clawed or cuneate, white or pale yellow
• Stamens 6; long filaments 4, usually with tooth-like appendages
• Nectaries with lateral ones semilunar; median ones ± conical
• Fruit a transversely articulate silicula on gynophore; lower segment short, sterile, stalk-like; upper segment ovoid to globose, hard, indehiscent, 1-seeded; stigma sessile
• Seeds faintly sculptured or smooth, spheroid; cotyledons folded around incumbent radicle
• x = 10 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Crambe L.
  • Linnaeus: 671 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 301 (1754)
  • Schulz: 228 (1919)
  • Ball: 297 (1964)
  • Marais: 15 (1970)
  • Jonsell: 15 (1982)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 20, W Asia, central Europe, the Mediterranean region, northern tropical Africa
• Southern Africa : Species 1: * Crambe hispanica L. introduced and restricted to KwaZulu-Natal