LEPIDIUML. - PEPPERWEED
Scientific Description:
Annual, biennial or perennial herbs, glabrous, papillose or with simple hairs. Leaves simple or pinnate. Sepals not saccate. Petals white or yellow, spathulate, sometimes absent. Stamens 6, 4 or 2. Filaments slender, neither winged nor toothed. Median honey glands present. Ovary with 2 ovules; style short or absent. Fruit a strongly compressed angustiseptate silicula, dehiscent, winged or not. Seeds pendulous from apex of each loculus, mucilaginous; radicle incumbent or obliquely so.
Reference:
Hedge IC (1965). Lepidium L., In: Davis PH (ed.), Flora of Turkey and the East Aegean Islands, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 1: 279.
Public Description:
Lepidium, is a genus of annual, biennial or perennial herbs, commonly known as “pepperweed” or “pepperwort”, and is native to the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe, and Australia. There are approximately 234 species in the world and 15 species (19 taxa) in Türkiye. The genus name “Lepidium” is a Greek word meaning “small scale”, which is thought to derived from a folk medicine usage of the plant to treat leprosy, which cause small scales on the skin.
References:
Anonymous 1 (2015). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lepidium, Accessed date: 28.12.2015.
Anonymous 2 (2015). http://www.theplantlist.org/1.1/browse/A/Brassicaceae/Lepidium/ Accessed date: 28.12.2015.
Mutlu B (2012). Lepidium L., In: Güner, A., Aslan, S., Ekim, T., Vural, M. & Babaç, M.T. (eds.), Türkiye Bitkileri Listesi (Damarlı Bitkiler). Nezahat Gökyiğit Botanik Bahçesi ve Flora Araştırmaları Derneği Yayını. İstanbul, pp. 284−287.
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