MATTHIOLA SINUATA

Family and Genus:- See- CRUCIFERAE

Common Names:- Sea stock

Homotypic Synonyms:- Cheiranthus sinuatus, Hesperis sinuata.

Meaning:- Matthiola (L) For Pierandrea Mattioli (1501-77), Italian physician and

botanist.

Sinuata (L) With a wavy margin, sinuate, winding, waved.

General description:- Densely white-tomentose, stout biennial (rarely annual or

perennial), woody at the base.

Stem:-

1) 20-50 cm tall, usually white-tomentose throughout.

Leaves:-

1) Basal, oblanceolate in outline, sinuate-lobed to pinnatifid.

2) Uppermost leaves entire.

Flowers:-

1) Lower pedicels 4-15(-18) mm in fruit.

2) Sepals 8-12 mm.

3) Petals 17-25 x 3-8 mm, pale purple.

4) stigma narrower than the siliqua, without conspicuous horns.

Fruit:-

1) Siliquae, erecto-patent, 70-100 x 3-4 mm, compressed, tomentose,

conspicuous yellow or blackish glands, slightly bilobed at the apex but without

with conspicuous homs.

Key features:-

1) Siliqua, compressed, at least 2 mm wide, without horns or with horns not more

than 1·5 mm. With large, conspicuous blackish or yellowish glands, easily

visible even when immature.

2) Lower pedicels, up to 25 mm in fruit.

Click here for a glossary of terms used.

Habitat:- Generally on rocky and stony shores, more rarely in open dry shrubby

vegetation some distance inland. 0-100(-500) m.

Distribution:- Throughout Greece less common in the north. - W Europe and the

Mediterranean region eastwards to W Anatolia and Cyrenaica. On Crete scattered

around a few coastal areas.

Flowering time:- Mar to mid-June.

Photos by:- Steve Lenton