Annual, biennial or perennial herbs, glabrous or hairy with simple, often setaceous hairs; roots slender or tuberous. Leaves alternate, lower rarely rosulate, lyrate, cuneate or amplexicaul. Racemes usually short and corymbose. Flowers mediocre, usually yellow, pedicellate, regular; pedicels increasing in length in fruit, often slightly thickened and spreading. Sepals sub-equal; outer oblong obtuse; inner ovate, sub-obtuse, saccate at the base. Stamens 6; filaments linear. Nectar glands often green in colour; laterals abruptly prismatic, often small; middle subglobose, oblong, filiform, sometimes large, up to 0.7 mm long. Gynop¬hore present or absent in fruit. Ovary cylindrical, 5-45 ovuled. Siliquae linear or oblong, cylindrical, rarely sub-compressed, often somewhat torulose; beak usually conical, rarely cylindrical or filiform, 0-3 seeded; valves with a prominent mid-vein; style with a prominent capitate sub-bilobed stigma; septum complete, hyaline, often somewhat thickened between the seeds; seeds uniseriate, globose or rarely ovoid, brown, finely alveolate; cotyledons conduplicate (longitudinally folded).