Noccaea montana

Noccaea montana, the mountain pennycress, is a small perennial herb in the cabbage family (Brassicaceae) native to the mountains of France and central Europe, especially the Alps, Jura, and parts of the Carpathians. Plants grow from a slender taproot and form low tufts of glaucous, glabrous foliage. The basal leaves are spatulate to obovate, entire or shallowly toothed, and gathered into a rosette; cauline leaves are smaller, ovate to oblong, sessile and clasping the stem with rounded auricles, characteristic of Noccaea. Flowering stems are 10 to 30 centimeters tall, erect, branched above, and bear terminal racemes of small white to pale lilac flowers; each flower has four petals 4 to 8 millimeters long in the typical cruciform arrangement, with six tetradynamous stamens. The fruit is a flattened silicula, broadly obcordate to obovate, narrowly winged towards the apex and notched at the tip, containing a few small brown seeds. The species occurs in alpine and subalpine grasslands, rocky meadows, screes, and on calcareous soils, usually between about 1,000 and 2,500 meters elevation. The genus Noccaea was segregated from Thlaspi on the basis of molecular and morphological evidence.