Description:

• Annual, biennial or perennial herbs, suffrutices and shrubs, glabrous or hairy; hairs simple, medifixed, branched, stellate or glandular
• Leaves mostly alternate, often crowded in a rosette in short-lived herbs, simple, trifoliolate or pinnate, entire or variously lobed or cut, often auriculate; stipules minute or 0
• Inflorescence usually a terminal, usually bractless raceme, sometimes somewhat corymbose, occasionally a corymbose panicle, rarely intercalary or leaf-opposed, or flowers axillary, solitary
• Flowers bisexual, usually regular
• Sepals 4, free, in 2 pairs, equal or unequal, inner (lateral) pair often saccate or spurred at base
• Petals 4(-0), free, entire, bilobed or fimbriate, usually clawed, sometimes with appendage at base
• Stamens 6, lateral 2 shorter than median 4 arising in pairs, rarely only 2 or 4 or many; filaments with or without wings or appendages; anthers 2-thecous, opening by longitudinal slits
• Nectaries at base of filaments variable in number and form
• Ovary superior, sessile or stipitate, 2-celled or sometimes septum absent and then 1-celled; placentation parietal; ovules in (1)2 rows separated by the septum, generally pendulous, 1-many per locule; style simple, short or long; stigma capitate or bilobed
• Fruit basically a capsule divided into 2 locules by the persistent septum (replum) to which seeds are attached; referred to as a silicula (short) or siliqua (long), frequently with seed-bearing beak, usually dehiscing by 2 valves falling to reveal septum, rarely indehiscent or transversely articulate; some fruit latiseptate (with a broad septum, because fruit are flattened parallel to the septum), or angustiseptate (with narrow septum because fruit are flattened at right angle to the septum)
• Seeds discoid to globose, often winged, seed coat often mucilaginous; embryo folded double with radicle lying against sides (accumbent) or backs of cotyledons (incumbent); cotyledons linear to circular, variously folded or rolled; endosperm 0 or little

Nomenclature:

• Brassicaceae
  • Sonder: 19 (1860)
  • Schulz: 227 (1936)
  • Phillips: 347 (1951)
  • Exell: 190 (1960)
  • Schreiber: 48 (1966)
  • Marais: 1 (1970)
  • Jonsell: 1 (1982)
  • Jonsell: 62 (1993)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genera 390, species ± 3000, cosmopolitan, but mostly in northern, temperate regions, especially the Mediterranean and Middle East
• Southern Africa: Genera 34 (20 exotic), species 153 (37 exotic); many of economic importance

References:

• EXELL, A.W. 1960. Cruciferae. Flora zambesiaca 1
• JONSELL, B. 1982. Cruciferae. Flora of tropical East Africa, Cruciferae
• JONSELL, B. 1993. Brassicaceae (Cruciferae). Flora of Somalia 1
• MARAIS, W. 1970. Cruciferae. Flora of southern Africa 13
• PHILLIPS, E.P. 1951. The genera of South African flowering plants, edn 2. Memoirs of the Botanical Survey of South Africa No. 25
• SCHREIBER, A. 1966. Brassicaceae. Prodromus einer Flora von Südwestafrika 48
• SCHULZ, O.E. 1936. Cruciferae. Die natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien II,17b
• SONDER, O.W. 1860. Crucifereae. Flora capensis 1

Resources:

• Classification of Brassicaceae
• Key to Brassicaceae genera

• Brassicaceae genera: