Perennial, 30-120 cm tall, erect, often much branched and somewhat woody below, glabrous or sparsely hairy with usually simple hairs, sometimes slightly fleshy and glaucous. Lower leaves shortly to long stalked (petiole 3-10 cm long), ovate-lanceolate, entire to serrate, acute to obtuse, 5-15 cm long, 2-6 cm broad; upper leaves smaller, usually lanceolate or oblong-elliptic, serrate to entire; shortly stalked to sessile. Racemes 25-50-flowered, corymbose, ebracteate. Flowers small, c. 2.5 mm across, white, often with pinkish bases; pedicels up to 5 mm long in fruit, filiform, spreading. Sepals 1 mm long, ovate-oblong or suborbicular, with obtuse or rounded apex. Petals 2-2.5 mm long, c.1.5 mm broad, spathulate, distinctly to obscurely clawed, with rounded apex. Stamens 6, c. 1.5: 1.8 mm long with minute anthers. Siliculae 1.5-2 mm long, ovate-orbicular, with obtuse, hardly emarginate apex, having almost sessile stigma topping the fruit apex; valves glabrous to sub-hairy, without distinct veins; septum c.0.5 mm broad; seed c. 1 mm long, oblong-elliptic, brown.

F1.Per.: May-July.

Type: Described from Europe, England etc., Herb.Linn.no.824/11 a (LINN).

Distribution: Europe, N. Africa, C. and S.W. Asia to W. Pakistan and Himalayas.

A very variable species, especially with regard to hairiness and fleshiness of leaves etc. which are not reliable taxonomic characters. Lepidium sibiricum is a more fleshy state or form of this species.