Flora of North America species comparison

petiolate, sessile, or subsessile;

blade base usually not auriculate (except Paysonia), margins entire, dentate, or sinuate.

usually short-stalked, subsessile, or sessile, sometimes long-stalked, stellate, scalelike, subdendritic, or forked, sometimes mixed with simple ones.

ebracteate, often elongated in fruit.

actinomorphic;

sepals erect, spreading, ascending, or reflexed, lateral pair seldom saccate basally;

petals white, yellow, lavender, purple, violet, orange, or brown [pink], claw present, often distinct;

filaments unappendaged, not winged;

pollen (3 or) 4–11-colpate.

suborbicular to elliptic or broadly oblong, keeled on one side;

valves: margins covering replum edges, (base and apex rounded), glabrous inside.

silicles or siliques, dehiscent, unsegmented, terete, latiseptate, or angustiseptate;

ovules 2–100 per ovary;

style usually distinct;

stigma entire or strongly 2-lobed.

biseriate, uniseriate, or aseriate;

cotyledons accumbent or incumbent.