Disc Cress

A very polymorphic species with short and tall plants, smaller and larger fruits with densely hairy to glabrous valves.

Annual, up to 20 cm tall, erect or suberect, branched mostly from the base, clothed with short branched or stellate appressed hairs. Leaves narrowly oblanceolate or oblong, rarely spathulate, sessile, 5-20 mm long, 1.5-4 mm borad, entire. Racemes 25-50-flowered, up to 10 cm long in fruit. Flowers c. 1.5 mm across, yellowish; pedicel up to 4 mm long in fruit, filiform, recurved. Sepals c. 1.5 mm long. Petals about as long as the sepals, linear-oblong, cuneate, apex subemarginate. Stamens c. 1.2: 1.5 mm long; filaments appendaged-dentate. Siliculae orbicular, suborbicular or broadly elliptic, very variable in size and hairiness, usually 4-5 mm in diam., biconvex; apex distinctly notched with a short, subsessile stigma; valves somewhat membranous, narrowly winged (margined), equally tumid, usually covered with simple, ± verruculose hairs, sometimes glabrous; seed 1, 1.5-2 mm in diameter.

Distribution: C. and W. Europe, Mediterranean region, S.W. Asia, eastward to Pakistan.

Fl. Per.: May-June.