| Classification |
| Kingdom: Plantae
Division: Magnoliophyta
Class: Magnoliopsida
Order Type: Eudicots-Rosids II
Order: Brassicales
Family: Brassicaceae + Capparaceae
Family Common Name: Mustard Family
Genera: Arabis, Aubrieta, Aurinia, Brassica, Iberis, Lobularia |
Defining Features: Folded
or curved embryo in different shapes.
Defining Morphology: Floral
Features: Inflorescences are indeterminate, terminal, axillary or reduced
to a single flower. Flowers are usually bisexual, actinomorphic or zygomorphic
and they have 4 petals, 6 or more stamens with a nectary outside them.
Ovaries are superior with parietal placentation. Fruit and Seed Features:
Dicotyledon. Fruit a berry or elongate capsule, drupe, nut, samara, silicle,
silique, or schizocarp. Seeds are usually without endosperm. Embryo is
folded or curved. Vegetative Features: Habit as trees, shrubs or herbs
with an odorous, watery juice. Leaves are mostly alternate, simple, bipinnate
to palmately compound and with or without stipules. Leaves are sometimes
in basal rosette.
Distribution: Cosmopolitan,
but most diverse in the Mediterranean regions.
Economic Use: As cultivated
garden ornamentals, vegetables, medicinal, condiment and important oilseed
plants. Flowers of Capparis spinosa can be pickled and used
as a condiment. Some species are poisonous to animals. Arabidopsis
thaliana is being used for research. Arabidopsis thaliana
was the first plant that its entire genome was sequenced by plant molecular
biologists by December 14, 2000.
Number of Genera Globally: 419
Number of Species Globally:
4,130
