Brassicaceae relationships within the Brassicaceae have not always been well resolved yet. It has long been clear that the Aethionemae are sister of the remainder of the family. One analysis from 2014 represented the relation between 39 tribes with the following tree. The name "Brassicaceae" comes to international scientific vocabulary from New Latin, from "Brassica", the type genus, + "-aceae", a standardized suffix for plant family names in modern taxonomy. The genus name comes from the Classical Latin word "brassica", referring to cabbage and other cruciferous vegetables. The alternative older name, Cruciferae, meaning "cross-bearing", describes the four petals of mustard flowers,
Plant defense against herbivory reproduction. Many models have been proposed to explore how and why some plants make this investment in defenses against herbivores. The optimal defense hypothesis attempts to explain how the kinds of defenses a particular plant might use reflect the threats each individual plant faces. This model considers three main factors, namely: risk of attack, value of the plant part, and the cost of defense. The first factor determining optimal defense is risk: how likely is it that a plant or certain plant parts will be attacked? This is also related to the "plant apparency hypothesis", which states that a plant