Psilonema C.A. Mey.
Annual to perennial herbs, often small and with decumbent branches, clothed with short stellate hairs, sometimes heterotrichous, often lepidote. Leaves simple, often linear, entire, without persistent swollen bases. Racemes ebracteate, simple or branched, usually slightly elongating in fruit. Flowers small, yellow, sometimes whitish. Sepals not saccate at base, erect, generally free. Petals slightly to about twice as long as the sepals, narrowly spathulate-oblong; apex often slightly emarginate. Stamens 6; filaments winged (on one side or both) or wingless; anthers short, blunt. Lateral nectar glands in pairs, small, often triangular; middle absent. Ovary sub-orbicular to elliptic, bilocular, 1-8 (mostly 2) ovuled in each locule; style often short with short subbilobed stigma. Siliculae sub-orbicular, broadly ovate or elliptic, bilocular, dehiscent, rarely subdehiscent or indehiscent; valves often tumid with a very narrow flattened margin (sometimes compressed and without a flattened margin), apex slightly emarginate or entire; septum broad, membranous, not veined; seeds on lateral or nearly apical placenta, often very narrowly winged, suborbicular, ± compressed.
About 100 species, mostly in the Mediterranean region, C. Europe and C. and W. Asia; only 10 species are recorded from our area.
