Plants with garlic smell when crushed; not scapose; glabrous or pubescent, trichomes simple. Stems erect [decumbent], often branched distally. Leaves basal and cauline; petiolate; basal (often withered by anthesis or fruiting), rosulate, long-petiolate, blade margins crenate, dentate, or sinuate; cauline shortly petiolate, blade margins dentate. Racemes elongated in fruit. Fruiting pedicels divaricate or ascending, stout (almost as broad as fruit [slender, narrower than fruit]). Flowers: sepals erect, oblong, lateral pair not saccate basally, (glabrous); petals oblanceolate, (longer than sepals), claw obscurely differentiated from blade, (apex obtuse); stamens slightly tetradynamous; filaments not dilated basally; anthers ovate or oblong, (apex obtuse); nectar glands confluent, subtending bases of stamens. Fruits siliques, sessile, linear [oblong], torulose or subtorulose, terete, subterete, or 4-angled; valves each with prominent midvein and distinct marginal veins, glabrous [scabrous]; replum rounded; septum complete; ovules [4–]6–22 per ovary; style obsolete or distinct (to 6 mm); stigma capitate, entire. Seeds plump, not winged, oblong; seed coat (longitudinally striate), not mucilaginous when wetted; cotyledons incumbent.

Distribution

Eurasia, n Africa.

Discussion

Species 2 (1 in the flora).

Alliaria brachycarpa M. Bieberstein is endemic to Caucasus.

Selected References

Cavers, P. B., M. I. Heagy, and R. F. Kokron. 1979. The biology of Canadian weeds. 35. Alliaria petiolata (M. Bieb.) Cavara and Grande. Canad. J. Pl. Sci. 59: 217–229.

Lower Taxa

Alliaria petiolata