Japanese name: シロイヌナズナ（白犬薺） Scientific name:Arabidopsis thaliana
[Overview]
An annual or biennial 10–30 cm tall, found on the coast and along roadsides in lowlands.
The stem is solitary, sometimes branching, and the base of the stem is densely hairy.
The leaves are of two kinds: basal leaves and leaves alternate on the stem.
The basal leaves form a rosette; they are obovate to oblanceolate, 1–5 cm long and 0.3–1.5 cm wide, with low teeth, and have simple and forked hairs on both sides.
The stem leaves are sparse and slender.
A raceme at the stem tip bears white flowers with 4 petals.
The fruit is a silique, long and linear, 0.9–1.8 cm long, borne pointing upward, and the inflorescence elongates when in fruit.
[Notes]
Because a generation is short, taking 1–2 months from germination to seed set, and because it is easy to cultivate, has no self-incompatibility and has a small genome size, it is useful as a model organism in genetics.
In 2000 it became the first vascular plant to have its entire base sequence determined.
