Al Schneider's Rocky Mountains Plant Descriptions

Mountain Pepperweed
Lepidium montanum
Mustard family (Brassicaceae)

Western Peppergrass is a highly variable plant with at least 20 varieties recorded. Some form of this plant blooms almost throughout the growing season, from early in the spring to early in the fall. Plants can be short, tall, and in between. The most common are almost shrub-like with hundreds of tiny flowers making them quite attractive. Seed pods have a nice peppery tang. Linnaeus named this in 1753; "lepidion" is Greek for "little " and refers to a on the seed pod. The species was named by famed collector and Harvard Professor, Thomas Nuttall in Torrey and Gray's 1838 "Flora of North America". Nuttall was also the first to collect this plant, probably in 1835, on his trip west with the Wyeth Expedition of 1834-1837.


©2005 Patrick Alexander

Description

or less commonly , sometimes woody above base, stems from 10 to 50" tall, or somewhat hairy. and sometimes also on stem, to 5" long and an inch wide in many shapes, often on and often at least the uppermost leaves and . short, spreading or , straight or curved, hairy or not. Petals about 1/10" long, white. an to elliptical usually pod.

Field Marks

Myriad of tiny white flowers topping short to very tall stems in clumps or singly.

© Al Schneider

An entire leaf has smooth edges. Not toothed or lobed.

scale -- A very small leaf around a dormant bud. Also other things that might remind one of fish scales on the surface of ferns, stems and the like.

A perennial plant lives and blooms for many years.

pedicel -- The stem of a single flower.

A herb is a plant whose stems die back to the ground in the winter.

ovate -- Oval, egg-shaped, with a tapering point.

A simple leaf blade is one that is not divided into separate leaflets.

fruit -- any seed-bearing structure in flowering plants. It is formed from the ovary after flowering.

biennial -- a plant which lives for two years, producing a basal rosette of leaves the first year and a full plant, flower, and seed the second year followed by the death of the entire plant at the end of the second year.

basal leaves -- a leaf that grows lowest on the stem of a plant.

genus -- A subdivision of a botanical Family in which all members have a significant number of similar characteristics.

glabrous -- smooth, glossy, having no bristles or hair-like structures. Bald.

ascending -- growing obliquely upward and usually curved.

lobe -- Being divided by clefts.