Eruca Miller

Herbs, annual or rhizomatous perennial, with pilose simple spreading or retrorse trichomes, sometimes glabrous. Leaves lyrate-pinnatisect. Flowers yellow, cream-coloured or purplish, in elongating bractless racemes; pedicels short, erect in fruit. Sepals oblong, erect, subequal, lateral ones saccate at base. Petals obovate, long-clawed, usually yellowish with brown or violet nerves, rarely full violet. Staminal filaments linear; anthers oblong. Nectar glands minute. Ovary cylindrical, up to 50-ovuled; style as long as or longer than ovary; stigma small or inconspicuous. Fruits ovoid-oblong, somewhat turgid, dorsally compressed, beaked; valves concave, 3-nerved; replum hyaline, not pitted Seeds many, globose or ovoid, biseriate; cotyledons longitudinally conduplicate.

Chiefly distributed in Mediterranean region and North Africa; 6 species, 1 in India.

List of Lower Taxa