11. Camelina Crantz (false flax)

Plants annual, terrestrial, pubescent with both unbranched and stalked forked and stellate hairs, rarely nearly glabrous. Stems 30–100 cm long, erect or ascending, sometimes few-branched in the upper half. Leaves alternate and usually also a few basal at flowering, 2–7 cm long, the lower leaves short-petiolate, the upper leaves sessile, clasping with prominent, pointed auricles, the leaf blades oblanceolate to lanceolate or nearly linear in outline, the margins entire, wavy, or with shallow, widely spaced teeth. Inflorescences racemes or few-branched panicles, the flowers not subtended by bracts. Sepals narrowly oblong to oblanceolate, erect or ascending. Petals not lobed, but sometimes shallowly notched at the tip, light yellow or yellow. Styles 1.0–3.5 mm long. Fruits ascending, less than 2 times as long as wide, obovoid or pear-shaped, tapered at the base to a short stalk above the attachment point of the perianth, elliptic in cross-section, slightly flattened parallel to the septum, the valves with an inconspicuous nerve in the middle, sometimes also with a faint network of smaller veins, the edges slightly raised but not winged, the valve tip extending into a beak into the persistent style, tardily dehiscent. Ovules 4–12 (more elsewhere) per locule. Seeds in 2 rows in each locule, usually 4 per locule (6–12 per fruit). Six species, Europe, Asia.

The two species found in Missouri can be difficult to differentiate, in spite of the apparent differences noted in the key to species.