Annual, biennial or perennial herbs, usually subglabrous or sparsely hairy with simple hairs. Leaves mostly lyrate-pinnatipartite, lower petiolate; upper sessile to subsessile. Racemes many flowered, elongated in fruit. Flowers small or mediocre, mostly yellow; pedicels often spreading and ± thickened. Sepals erect, not or slightly saccate at base. Petals nearly twice as long as the sepals, oblong-obovate, narrowed into a claw. Stamens 6; filaments not appendaged but often broadened at base; anthers oblong, obtuse or subobtuse. Lateral nectar glands annular, quadrate or hexangular; middle glands joining the laterals, often torose or short stalk-like. Ovary linear-cylindrical, sessile, usually many ovuled; style short, thickened with depressed, ± 2-lobed, capitate stigma. Siliquae linear-subcylindrical, erect to spreading, often elongated, bilocular, dehiscent; valves ± convex and 3-veined, usually glabrous; septum hyaline, rarely subfun¬gose; seeds 1-seriate, usually many, oblong or ellipsoid, brown, not mucilaginous when wet; radicle mostly incumbent.
Nearly 70 species, mostly in Temperate Zones; only 8 recorded from our area.