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garden-rocket, rocket-salad

Habit Annuals; not scapose; glabrous, hirsute, or hispid, (trichomes often retrorse).
Stems

erect, branched [unbranched].

Leaves

basal and cauline;

petiolate or sessile;

basal rosulate or not, petiolate, blade margins usually lyrate-pinnatifid or pinnatipartite, rarely bipinnatisect or undivided;

cauline shortly petiolate or sessile, blade (base not auriculate), margins entire, dentate, or pinnatifid.

Racemes

(corymbose), greatly elongated in fruit.

Flowers

sepals (sometimes persistent), erect, oblong [linear], (connivent), lateral pair saccate basally;

petals cream or yellow (with dark brown or purple veins), broadly obovate, claw differentiated from blade (± equal to sepals, apex obtuse or emarginate);

stamens strongly tetradynamous;

filaments not dilated basally;

anthers oblong or linear, (base sagittate, apex obtuse);

nectar glands (4), distinct, median pair present.

Fruiting pedicels

erect to ascending, stout.

Fruits

siliques, dehiscent, sessile, segments 2, linear or oblong [elliptic], not torulose, terete or slightly 4-angled; (terminal segment indehiscent, flattened and ensiform, seedless);

valves each with prominent midvein, (coriaceous), glabrous, hirsute, or hispid;

replum rounded;

septum complete, (membranous);

ovules 10–50 per ovary; (style obsolete);

stigma conical, 2-lobed (lobes connivent, decurrent).

Seeds

biseriate, plump, not winged, [sub]globose or ovoid;

seed coat (minutely reticulate), mucilaginous when wetted;

cotyledons conduplicate.

x

= 11.

Eruca

Distribution
from USDA
Eurasia; Africa [Introduced in North America; introduced also in Mexico, Central America, South America, Asia, Atlantic Islands, Australia]
[BONAP county map]
Discussion

Species 1.

(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)

Source FNA vol. 7, p. 434. Author: Suzanne I. Warwick.
Parent taxa Brassicaceae > tribe Brassiceae
Subordinate taxa
E. vesicaria
Name authority Miller: Gard. Dict. Abr. ed. 4, vol. 1. (1754)
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