Great yellow cress
Scientific Name: Rorippa amphibia (L.) Besser
Family: Brassicaceae
MORPHOLOGY
Habit and Size: Perennial herbaceous plant, with stoloniferous rhizome; height 30÷100 (200) cm.
Stem: The stems are ascending, striated, and branched.
Leaves: The leaves have a lanceolate blade, generally lobed-partite in the lower ones, and entire in the cauline ones; the margin is serrated, and the base is auriculate.
Flowers: The elongated and dense racemose inflorescences are composed of tetramerous flowers, with erect oblong sepals of 2 mm and yellow obovate petals of 4÷5 mm. Blooms from April to July.
Fruits and Seeds: The fruits are pedunculate siliques, glabrous, ovoid-oblong, 3-5.5(7) x 1-2 mm, spreading at fruiting; they contain biseriate seeds, ovoid, foveolate-reticulate, brown-reddish.
DISTRIBUTION AND HABITAT
Present throughout Italy except Calabria; in humid environments, widespread in ditches, along watercourses, on the edges of ponds and lakes, usually with the base immersed. It grows between 0 and 800 m.
Photo: under a free license from Saxifraga and Peter Meininger, Jan van der Straaten, Rutger Barendse, Ed Stikvoort



















