General: Perennial or biennial from a taproot or stem-base; stems several, 5-30 cm long, erect or spreading, simple or branched, more or less hairy with forked hairs, purplish.
Leaves: Basal leaves thick, linear-oblanceolate, 1-4 cm long, entire to somewhat toothed or wavy-margined, glabrous or somewhat hairy; stem leaves reduced, unstalked, lanceolate or linear, clasping at the bases.
Flowers: Racemes somewhat headlike in flower, greatly elongated in fruit; flower stalks erect or closely ascending, 2-6 mm long, hairy; petals white or purplish, 3-4 mm long; sepals 1.5-2.5 mm long, hairy, deciduous;
Fruits: Siliques, erect or closely ascending, 1-3 cm long, narrowly cylindric, about 1 mm wide, minutely hairy, somewhat constricted between the seeds; styles slender, 0.5-1 mm long; seeds in 1 row, 0.7-1 mm long.
Notes: An adequate monograph of North American Braya (especially those of the far north) has yet to be done, thus our taxonomy of these species is often confusing.
Moist to dry forests, river bars, scree slopes and gravelly slopes in the montane to alpine zones; infrequent in N BC, rare southward in the Rocky Mountains; N to AK, YT and NT, E to NF and disjunct in CO.