60. Halimolobos Tausch, Flora. 19: 410. 1836.
[Greek halimos, of salt, and lobos, rounded protuberance, alluding to superficial resemblance of fruit indumentum to salt]
Ihsan A. Al-Shehbaz, C. Donovan Bailey
Poliophyton O. E. Schulz
Annuals, biennials, or perennials; (base often woody); not scapose; pubescent throughout, trichomes sessile, subsessile, or short-stalked, dendritic and subdendritic, 3-6-rayed. Stems erect or ascending, unbranched or branched distally. Leaves cauline and sometimes basal; petiolate or sessile; basal (often withered by anthesis or fruiting), not rosulate, petiolate, blade margins coarsely dentate or pinnatifid [sinuate]; cauline petiolate or sessile, blade margins dentate or sinuate-dentate. Racemes (corymbose), slightly to considerably elongated in fruit. Fruiting pedicels divaricate or descending, slender, (densely pubescent). Flowers: sepals slightly or widely spreading, oblong; petals white, oblanceolate or spatulate, (± equal to sepals), claw obscurely differentiated from blade, (apex obtuse); stamens slightly tetradynamous, (slightly spreading, equal to or longer than petals); filaments not dilated basally; anthers oblong [ovate], (apex obtuse); nectar glands confluent, subtending bases of stamens. Fruits siliques or silicles, sessile, not or obscurely torulose, linear or ovoid to oblong, terete or angustiseptate; valves each obscurely veined, densely pubescent, (trichomes appressed, [sub]sessile, subdendritic, mixed with coarser, short-stalked, larger ones); replum rounded; septum complete; ovules 16-110 per ovary; style distinct; stigma capitate. Seeds uniseriate in siliques, biseriate in silicles, plump, not winged, oblong; seed coat (minutely reticulate), mucilaginous when wetted; cotyledons incumbent. x = 8.
Species 6 (3 in the flora): sw United States, n Mexico.
SELECTED REFERENCE Rollins, R. C. 1943. Generic revisions in the Cruciferae: Halimolobos. Contr. Dudley Herb. 3: 241-265.