Cakile lanceolata (Willd.) O. E. Schulz

• Title

  Cakile lanceolata (Willd.) O. E. Schulz

• Authors

  Nathaniel Lord Britton, Frances W. Horne

• Scientific Name

  Cakile lanceolata (Willd.) O.E.Schulz

• Description

  Flora Borinqueña Cakile lanceolata Mostacilla del mar Sea-rocket Family Brassicaceae Mustard Family Raphanus lanceolatus Willdenow, Species Plantarum 3: 562. 1801. Cakile lanceolata O. E. Schulz in Urban, Symbolae Antillanae 3: 504. 1903. Cakile aequalis L'Heritier; De Candolle, Systema Plantarum 2: 430. 1821. This is a common plant of sea-beaches and coastal rocks nearly throughout the West Indies and northern South America, ranging north to the southern United States and Bermuda, always growing within saline influence and it is locally plenty on the coasts of Porto Rico; its seeds evidently retain vitality in salt water, and are freely distributed by tides and currents. There are but few species of Cakile, all herbaceous, only three being generally recognized by botanists, namely this one of tropical and subtropical America, one on coasts of the Old World, to which the name recorded as Arabic, was first applied, and one on the coast of eastern North America. They are annual, smooth and fleshy herbs with small, purplish or white flowers, with 4 sepals, 4 petals and 6 stamens; their fruits are narrow pods curiously 2-jointed, the joints usually containing only one seed, decaying without splitting open. Cakile lanceolata is an herb from 0.4 to 0.8 meter high, often much branched. Its leaves are various, the lower ones broadly oblong, blunt, coarsely toothed, from 5 to 8 centimeters long, the upper ones smaller, narrowly obovate to oblong, or oblong-lanceolate (whence the specific name), and more or less toothed, or with continuous margins. The clusters of flowers are short, or elongated, in fruit sometimes as much as 30 centimeters long; the pale purplish flowers are from 6 to 10 millimeters broad, and short-stalked, their stalks thickening and becoming 4 to 6 millimeters long, the upper joint from 1.5 to 4 times as long as the lower one.