Annuals, biennials, or perennials [subshrubs]; (base sometimes woody); not scapose; (glandular or not), pubescent, trichomes stalked, stellate or dendritic, or, rarely, forked or simple. Stems erect to ascending or decumbent, unbranched or branched. Leaves basal and cauline; petiolate or sessile; basal rosulate or not, petiolate, blade margins entire, dentate, or pinnatisect. Racemes (corymbose, several-flowered). Fruiting pedicels divaricate or ascending [erect], slender or stout. Flowers: sepals (connivent), oblong to lanceolate or linear, lateral pair strongly saccate basally; petals yellow, white, pink, purple, violet, or brown [yellowish green], broadly obovate, spatulate, oblong, or linear (much longer than sepals, flat or circinately rolled inwards, margins crisped or not), claw differentiated from blade, (apex obtuse, rounded, subacute, or emarginate); stamens strongly tetradynamous; filaments not dilated basally; anthers linear [oblong], (apex obtuse); nectar glands (4 and) lateral, 1 on each side of lateral stamen, or (2 and) semiannular, intrastaminal. Fruits sessile, linear, subtorulose [torulose], often straight, terete or latiseptate; valves each with prominent midvein, pubescent; replum rounded; septum complete, (often opaque, veinless); style obsolete or distinct; stigma conical, 2-lobed (lobes prominent, distinct or connate, decurrent, with or without 2 or 3 hornlike appendages). Seeds flattened, narrowly winged or not winged, oblong, ovate, suborbicular, or orbicular; seed coat (minutely reticulate), not mucilaginous when wetted; cotyledons accumbent. x = 7.

Distribution

Introduced; Europe, Asia, n, e Africa, Atlantic Islands (Canary Islands), introduced also in Australia.

Discussion

species ca. 50 (2 in the flora)

Selected References

None.

Lower Taxa

Matthiola incana, Matthiola longipetala

Key

1	Fruits compressed, 3-6 mm wide, without stigmatic horns; cauline leaf blade margins entire or repand, rarely sinuate; fruiting pedicels (6-)10-20(-25) mm, thinner than fruit; petals 7-15 mm wide.	Matthiola incana
1	Fruits terete, 1-2 mm wide, with 2 stigmatic horns; cauline leaf blade margins dentate to pinnatifid, rarely entire; fruiting pedicels (0.5-)1-2(-3) mm, nearly as thick as fruit; petals 2-5 mm wide.	Matthiola longipetala