Alliaria

Plants with garlic smell when crushed; not scapose; glabrous or pubescent, trichomes simple. Stems erect [decumbent], often branched distally. Leaves basal and cauline; petiolate; basal (often withered by anthesis or fruiting), rosulate, long-petiolate, blade margins crenate, dentate, or sinuate; cauline shortly petiolate, blade margins dentate. Racemes elongated in fruit. Fruiting pedicels divaricate or ascending, stout (almost as broad as fruit [slender, narrower than fruit]). Flowers: sepals erect, oblong, lateral pair not saccate basally, (glabrous); petals oblanceolate, (longer than sepals), claw obscurely differentiated from blade, (apex obtuse); stamens slightly tetradynamous; filaments not dilated basally; anthers ovate or oblong, (apex obtuse); nectar glands confluent, subtending bases of stamens. Fruits siliques, sessile, linear [oblong], torulose or subtorulose, terete, subterete, or 4-angled; valves each with prominent midvein and distinct marginal veins, glabrous [scabrous]; replum rounded; septum complete; ovules [4-] 6-22 per ovary; style obsolete or distinct (to 6 mm); stigma capitate, entire. Seeds plump, not winged, oblong; seed coat (longitudinally striate), not mucilaginous when wetted; cotyledons incumbent.

Pet white, spatulate, gradually narrowed to the claw; short stamens surrounded at base by an annular gland; each pair of long stamens separated by a trigonous gland; filaments flattened; anthers oval; ovary cylindric, with few-several ovules per locule; style not differentiated; stigma capitate; frs linear, elongate, 4-angled, each valve with a conspicuous midnerve and smaller lateral veins; seeds in one row, nearly cylindric, longitudinally striate; erect biennials or perennials with broad leaves, and with the odor of garlic. 2, Eurasia.

Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.

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