General: Annual herb from slender taproot; stems simple or branched, 5-25 (35) cm tall, hairy with both branched and starlike hairs, sometimes with some simple hairs or nearly glabrous.
Leaves: Basal leaves few; stem leaves on lower third of stem, narrowly egg- or spoon-shaped; 1-3 cm long, 0.1-2 cm wide, minutely to regularly toothed; upper surface of leaves hairy with simple hairs and some long-stalked, 2-branched, 3-branched, and crosslike hairs; lower leaf surfaces with mostly crosslike hairs, but also some long-stalked, 2-branched and 3-branched hairs.
Flowers: Racemes 10- to 50-flowered, long and lax; petals yellowish, 2.5-4 mm long; sepals 2-2.5 mm long, sparsely soft-hairy to glabrous.
Fruits: Silicles, 3-10 mm long, 1-2 mm wide, elliptic to elliptic-oblanceolate, glabrous or hairy; fruiting stalks to 35 mm long, 1-5 times as long as silicles, spreading-ascending, glabrous; styles lacking; seeds 25-60, oval, light brown, about 0.7 mm long.
Moist to dry open forests, grasslands and shrublands in the lowland, steppe and montane zones; common in S BC, rare northward; circumpolar, N to AK, YT and NT, E to PQ and S to CO and N CA; Eurasia.
The table below shows the species-specific information calculated from original data (BEC database) provided by the BC Ministry of Forests and Range. (Updated August, 2013)
