Undershrubs or perennial, rarely annual herbs, often with woody bases and shrubby in appearance, much branched, erect or spreading, hoary with bipartite appressed white hairs. Leaves linear oblong, sessile. Racemes lax, ebracteate, elongated in fruit. Flowers small or large, pale yellow, mauve, orange or whitish, shortly pedicelled. Sepals erect, obtuse, not saccate, hoary. Petals slightly longer to about twice as long as the sepals, oblong-linear, clawed, apex rounded; margin often crimped, and limb coiled inwards. Stamens 6; filaments linear; anthers oblong-linear. Lateral nectar glands horseshoe shaped, open towards the inner side; middle absent. Ovary, oblong, 10-40-ovuled, hairy; style distinct. Siliquae oblong, compressed, narrow to broad (rarely suborbicular) canescent with bipartite appressed hairs, bilocular, dehiscent; gynophore obscure to very short but distinct; valves with distinct mid-vein; septum membranous, with a distinct mid-vein and obscure reticulate venation; seeds uniseriate to biseriate, orbicular, wing¬ed, compressed; radicle accumbent.
About 10 species in S.W.Asia, C. and N.Africa, India and Pakistan; 4 species recorded for our area.
Fruits often variable but the flower size, especially the size of sepals and petals, is reliable; the style character also seems to be constant. The shrubby habit may sometimes deceive, specially in an year old plant, which look like annual.
