Arabidopsis thaliana Thale Cress

Arabidopsis thaliana, Thale Cress, is a weedy, annual crucifer with small white flowers. It is widespread and common in cultivated ground, bare places and on walls. The thin upright stems with few leaves are almost skeletal, arising from a basal rosette, but the self-polinated flowers give rise to lots of long, wide-spreading fruit capsules which produce abundant seed. It has a scattered distribution in the lowlands of West Glamorgan, particularly in the vicinity of large towns where it is a unbiquitous member of the pavement flora. Thale Cress has a small nuclear genome (2n=10) with very little dispersed, repetitive DNA. This, and the fact that it has a very short generation time of a few weeks, has made it an important species in molecular genetics. It was one of the first plants to have its entire genome sequenced. 

Native