Lepidium L.

Herbs, annual or perennial, or subshrubs, erect, prostrate or spreading, glabrous, or pubescent with simple or branched hairs, sometimes glandular hairy. Leaves entire or bi-or tri-pinnatifid, sessile or the lower petiolate. Flowers small, inconspicuous, usally in elongating ebracteate racemes. Sepals oblique, long or ovate, orbicular, slightly concave, not saccate. Petals up to 3 mm long, scarcely longer than sepals, sometimes lacking or mere vestiges, white, pink or sulphur yellow. Stamens 6, 4 or 2; & filaments free, edentate; anthers nearly orbicular. Ovary sessile, flat, 2-ovuled with distinct short style and capitate stigma. Fruit a silicula, strongly flattened, 2-valved; valves winged, usually rounded or keeled at back, glabrous to hirsute; apex scarcely notched and barely winged to deeply notched and prominently winged; septum narrow. seeds usually 1 or rarely 2 in each locule, pendulous; cotyledons mostly Incumbent.

Nearly cosmopolitan; about 150 species, 10 in India.

Literature. THELLUNG, A. (1907) Die Gattung Lepidium (L.) R. Br. Eine monographische Studie. Mitt. Bot. Mus. Univ. Zurich 28: 1 - 340.

KEY TO THE SPECIES

1a. Stamens 6

2

b. Stamens 4 or 2

5

2a. Upper cauline leaves perfoliate

6. Lepidium perfoliatum

b. Upper cauline leaves not perfoliate

3

3a. Fruits 5 - 6 mm long, prominently winged and broadly notched at apex

9. Lepidium sativum

b. Fruits 2 - 3.5 mm long, neither winged not notched at apex

4

4a. Leaves oblong-lanceolate, acute at apex; racemes corymbose; calyx deciduous

4. Lepidium latifolium

b. Leaves oblong, obtuse at base; racemes densely capitate; calyx persistent

5. Lepidium obtusum

5a. Stems glabrous or with a few smooth hairs

6

b. Stems distinctly puberulous

7

6a. Stems usually glabrous; upper cauline leaves oblanceolate or spathulate

7. Lepidium pinnatifidum

b. Stems often with a few unbranched hairs; upper cauline leaves linear

8. Lepidium ruderale

7a. Hairs on stems capitate or glandular

8

b. Hairs on stems terete

9

8a. Herbs erect; hairs capitate; racemes elongated in fruit

2. Lepidium apetalum

b. Herbs procumbent; hairs glandular; racemes capitate in fruit

3. Lepidium capitatum

9a. Petals longer than sepals; pedicels divaricate, straight

10. Lepidium virginicum

b. Petals shorter than sepals; pedicels arcuately patent

1. Lepidium africanum

List of Lower Taxa