Flora of North America species comparison

The green links below add additional plants to the comparison table. Blue links lead to other Web sites.
enable glossary links

Thlaspi

penny-cress
Habit Plants often fetid when crushed; not scapose; glabrous or pubescent.
Stems

erect, unbranched or branched distally.
Leaves

basal and cauline;

petiolate or sessile [subsessile];

basal (often withered in fruit), rosulate or not, petiolate [subsessile], margins entire, repand, dentate, or sinuate-dentate;

cauline sessile, blade (base auriculate or sagittate), margins dentate, repand, or entire.
Racemes

(several-flowered), considerably elongated in fruit.
Flowers

sepals erect or ascending, ovate or oblong, (margins membranous);

petals spatulate [oblong], claw differentiated or not from blade, (apex obtuse or emarginate);

stamens slightly tetradynamous;

filaments not dilated basally;

anthers ovate, (apex obtuse);

nectar glands (2 or 4), lateral, often 1 on each side of lateral stamen, median glands absent.
Fruiting pedicels

divaricate, (straight or slightly curved), slender.
Fruits

silicles, sessile, oblong, obovate, obcordate, or suborbicular, (apex often notched), keeled, strongly angustiseptate;

valves winged throughout or apically, glabrous;

replum rounded;

septum complete, (not veined);

ovules 6–16 per ovary;

style obsolete or not, (included in apical notch);

stigma capitate.
Seeds

plump, not winged, ovoid;

seed coat (coarsely reticulate, alveolate or concentrically striate), not mucilaginous when wetted;

cotyledons accumbent.
x

= 7.

Thlaspi
Distribution
from USDA
Eurasia; n Africa [Introduced in North America; introduced also nearly worldwide]
[BONAP county map]
Discussion

Species 6 (2 in the flora).

Thlaspi was divided by F. K. Meyer (1973) into 12 genera largely based on seed-coat sculpture and anatomy. Molecular data (K. Mummenhoff et al. 1997; M. Koch and Mummenhoff 2001) showed that Thlaspi is polyphyletic and strongly supported some of Meyer’s segregates, including Microthlaspi and Noccaea, both of which are recognized in this flora. As here delimited, Thlaspi consists of six species (Meyer), instead of over 75 recognized by various authors.

(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
Key
1. Plants glabrous throughout; fruits broadly winged throughout, wing 3.5-5 mm wide apically; seeds concentrically striate.
T. arvense
1. Plants sparsely to densely pubescent basally along stems; fruits obscurely winged basally, wing to 1 mm wide apically; seeds alveolate.
T. alliaceum
Source FNA vol. 7, p. 745. Author: Ihsan A. Al-Shehbaz.
Parent taxa Brassicaceae > tribe Thlaspideae
Subordinate taxa
T. alliaceum, T. arvense
Name authority Linnaeus: Sp. Pl. 2: 645. (1753): Gen. Pl. ed. 5, 292. (1754)
Web links 
Unless otherwise noted, all data comes from the online version of the Flora of North America, who have made most of their content available via a Creative Commons license (CC BY 4.0).



Type/paste one or more Latin names into the boxes above; matching taxa will show up below the box as you type. You can use the up/down arrow keys to move through the list.

(If the plant you're looking for doesn't show up in the auto-complete list, that means it either isn't described in Flora of North America yet, or it's listed under a synonym. And please note that Flora of North America is still missing several plant families, including Apiaceae, Boraginaceae, and Polemoniaceae.)

Choose a data source: Flora of North America, OregonFlora, UW Burke Herbarium

The species comparison tool is brought to you by:
Northwest Wildflowers