mustard family

American  

noun

1. the plant family Cruciferae (or Brassicaceae), characterized by herbaceous plants having alternate leaves, acrid or pungent juice, clusters of four-petaled flowers, and fruit in the form of a two-parted capsule, and including broccoli, cabbage, candytuft, cauliflower, cress, mustard, radish, sweet alyssum, turnip, and wallflower.

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Example Sentences

A few plants in the cabbage and mustard family pay a dramatic price to fend off hungry caterpillars: they kill off patches of their own leaves where butterflies have laid eggs.

From Scientific American

They are two different varieties, made from a non-G.M.O. oil in the mustard family.

From New York Times

The "distinctive flavor" of brassica vegetables, the cabbage and mustard family that broccoli also sits in, relates to a class of compounds called "glucosinolates," Stansell told Salon.

From Salon

Journals from the expedition were used to relocate this wildflower – part of the mustard family – more than 150 years later.

From The Guardian

The experiment also included potato seeds, yeast and Arabidopsis, or rockcress, a small, flowering plant of the mustard family, but none of these showed signs of having sprouted.

From The Guardian