Plants of South Eastern New South Wales

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Cakile maritima subsp. maritima

Common name

Sea rocket

Family

Brassicaceae

Where found

Foredunes, seashores, and islands. Coastal. One record from suburban Sydney away from the beach.

Notes

Introduced annual or rarely perennial herb to 0.8 m high, or sprawling. Stems hairless. Leaves alternating up the stems, fleshy, yellow-green, mostly 6–10 cm long, deeply dissected with 2–4 pairs of lobes, toothed, or entire. Flowers with 4 petals each 8–14 mm long, white to purple. Flowers in clusters. Seed cases 12–27 mm long, 4–8 mm wide, breaking between the upper and lower segments. Lower segment of the seed cases bearing 2 lateral blunt horns towards the top, almost as wide as the upper segment.

Hybridises with Cakile edentula. Intermediates between the two species are common or dominant in some areas.

PlantNET description:  http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Cakile~maritima (accessed 6 January, 2021)