Noccaea perfoliata

Noccaea perfoliata (sometimes Microthlaspi perfoliatum), the perfoliate penny-cress, is a small slender annual in the family Brassicaceae growing 5–30 cm tall. From a basal rosette of small, stalked, ovate to obovate leaves it sends up a slender, often unbranched flowering stem bearing alternate, stalkless, glaucous bluish-green stem leaves whose rounded bases clasp the stem — the ‘perfoliate’ arrangement that gives the species its name. From March to May it produces short terminal racemes of tiny four-petalled white flowers about 2–3 mm across, which lengthen in fruit into open racemes of small flattened, broadly winged silicles notched at the apex, each containing a few small brown seeds. It is native across southern, central and southeastern Europe, North Africa, and from the eastern Mediterranean east to the Altai, Xinjiang and Pakistan, where it grows on dry calcareous soils of pastures, rocky banks, fallow fields and open scrub. No significant medicinal, edible, dye or fibre tradition is recorded.