Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Erect perennial herbs, woody at base.

Stems: Stems quadrangular, 3–6 dm long, usually sparingly branched, densely puberulent throughout.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite, crowded near middle of stems. Blades linear to oblong, 4–15 cm long, 0.15–1 cm wide. Apex attenuate. Base attenuate. Upper surfaces densely puberulent; lower surfaces whitish tomentose. Margins entire to crenulate, usually also revolute. Sessile. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers subsessile, in dense terminal racemes 6–12 cm long, 2 flowers per verticillaster, bracts narrowly lanceolate to linear, 3–10 mm long, lowest ones up to 40 mm long. Calyx actinomorphic, cylindrical, closed at maturity or nearly so, 5–8 mm long, very densely velvety puberulent, 5-toothed, the teeth narrowly to very broadly deltate, 0.6–2 mm long, splitting longitudinally, usually persistent or sometimes only ventral 1/2 persistent. Corolla zygomorphic, bilabiate, white or sometimes tinged purple externally, tube subcylindrical, 15–25 mm long, upper lip entire, 2–6 mm long, lower lip 3-lobed, 4–8 mm long, suborbicular; nectary disk often present at base of ovary, annular or developed on anterior side only. Stamens 4, both pairs of similar length or the upper pair slightly longer, ascending under the upper lip, included; filaments inserted near the throat; anthers dithecal; anther sacs divaricate, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, 2-carpellate, placentation basal-axile; ovules 1 per ovary lobe; style 1, included, shortly 2-lobed, the lobes clavate, pubescent in upper part; stigmatic only at the truncate apex, 1 lobe often rudimentary, subentire; stigmas 2.

Fruit: Nutlets 1-seeded; pale brown; ca. 2.5–3 mm long; apex truncate and sparsely pilose; base rounded to truncate; enclosed in the persistent closed calyx; pericarp thick and hard. Seeds with endosperm absent or scanty and oily.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Known from dry shrubland and woodland.

Elevation Range: ca. 760 m.