Lesser gold-of-pleasure

Camelina microcarpa is a slender erect annual or biennial herb of the Brassicaceae family growing 30-100 cm tall from a slender taproot. Stems are simple at the base and branched only in the inflorescence, sparsely to densely covered with short stiff branched (stellate) hairs intermixed with longer simple hairs. Basal and lower stem leaves form a soon-withering rosette and are lanceolate to oblong-lanceolate, 3-8 cm long, entire to remotely toothed and finely hairy; upper stem leaves are alternate, lanceolate, 1-5 cm long, sessile and clasping the stem with a deeply auriculate, sagittate base. The inflorescence is an elongating raceme of small pale lemon-yellow flowers, the open flowers borne above the developing fruits at the top of the inflorescence. Each flower has four sepals 2-3 mm long, four obovate petals 3-5 mm long and six stamens. The fruit is a small, hard, obovoid to pear-shaped silique 4-6 mm long on a slender ascending pedicel, with a narrow persistent style 1-2 mm long; valves are inflated and contain numerous tiny oblong reddish-brown seeds that become mucilaginous when wet. Native to Eurasia and now widely naturalised as a weed of cereal fields and waste ground throughout the temperate world.