Annuals, biennials, perennials, shrubs, or subshrubs; eglandular. Trichomes usually simple, rarely forked or dendritic [subdendritic], sometimes absent. Cauline leaves petiolate or sessile; blade base auriculate or not, margins entire, dentate, or pinnately lobed. Racemes usually ebracteate, often elongated in fruit. Flowers usually actinomorphic, rarely zygomorphic; sepals erect, ascending, spreading, or reflexed, lateral pair saccate or not basally; petals white, yellow, orange, pink, lilac, lavender, purple, green, brown, or nearly black, claw present, often distinct; filaments unappendaged, not winged; pollen 3-colpate. Fruits usually siliques, rarely silicles, usually dehiscent, unsegmented, usually terete, 4-angled, or latiseptate; ovules 1-210[-numerous] per ovary; style obsolete, distinct, or absent; stigma usually entire or 2-lobed (subentire in Sibaropsis, Streptanthella). Seeds usually biseriate or uniseriate, rarely aseriate; cotyledons accumbent or incumbent.

Genera 27, species ca. 215 (14 genera, 105 species in the flora): North America, Mexico, Central America, South America.