Members of the alliance are morphologically similar, with an elongated fleshy rhizome and either ternate or palmately compound leaves.

[5] The vegetative parts of this plant, which can reach 20–40 cm, arise from a segmented rhizome.

The leaves are on long petioles, deeply and palmately dissected into five segments with large "teeth" on the margins.

[8][9] Otto Karl Anton Schwarz placed Dentaria concatenata Michx.

It has the widest distribution of any member of the alliance, with a range that extends north to Québec and Ontario, south to Florida and Texas, and west to Kansas and Oklahoma.