Draba alpina

Draba alpina, commonly known as alpine whitlow-grass or alpine draba, is a small cushion-forming perennial herb in the mustard family Brassicaceae with a circumpolar arctic-alpine distribution, occurring across the high Arctic of North America, Greenland, Svalbard, northern Scandinavia and northern Russia, as well as on isolated alpine summits at lower latitudes. It forms low, dense rosettes only 2 to 10 cm tall, composed of small, linear to oblanceolate, often hairy leaves clustered at the base. Leafless flowering stems rise just above the rosette and bear short racemes of bright yellow, four-petalled cruciform flowers in summer. The fruit is a small, ovate, flattened silicle containing several seeds. The species is well adapted to short growing seasons, intense cold and dry, windswept gravels and rocky tundra, where it forms a characteristic component of fellfield and high-arctic herb-mat vegetation. As with many Draba species, the genus is taxonomically complex with several closely related microspecies and polyploid races.