Flora-Fauna

Erucaria rostrata (Boiss.) A.W.Hill ex Greuter & Burdet

(Willdenowia 15: 419, 1986; basionym: Erucaria boveana Coss.; treated by Mouterde as Erucaria boveana; Nouvelle Flore du Liban et de la Syrie, vol. 1, p. 405; 1966)

• Life-form & habit: Annual, slender, 20–50 cm tall, stems erect or ascending, much branched, glabrous or sparsely pubescent.
• Leaves: Basal leaves lyrate-pinnatifid, with a broad terminal lobe and smaller lateral ones; cauline leaves smaller, lanceolate, entire or pinnatifid.
• Inflorescence & flowers: Racemes elongated in fruit. Sepals erect, often tinged violet. Petals pinkish to lilac, 8–12 mm, clawed, exceeding the sepals. Stamens 6, tetradynamous.
• Fruit: Silique distinctively beaked (rostrate), 3–6 cm long, cylindrical, torulose, tapering into a long slender beak; valves with conspicuous nerves. Seeds small, globose, brown.
• Phenology: Flowers March–May.
• Habitat & elevation: Fields, waste ground, sandy or rocky soils, ruderal sites; low to mid elevations.
• Lebanese distribution: Beqaa (Baalbeck plain, Ras Baalbeck), coastal plains, and foothills of Mount Lebanon.
• Syrian distribution: Damascus plain, Hauran, Aleppo, Palmyra, Orontes valley.
• Native range: Lebanon–Syria, Palestine, Sinai (POWO).
• Introduced into: Germany (POWO).

⚠️ Taxonomic note: Boissier first described this taxon as Erucaria rostrata. Mouterde later treated Levantine material under E. boveana Coss., but recent revisions (Greuter & Burdet 1986) restored E. rostrata as the correct name for the Levantine populations, distinct by their long-beaked siliques and pinkish petals.