Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennial herbs, usually with bitter sap, usually woolly pubescent throughout.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Blades rugose. Margins toothed. Petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in dense axillary verticillasters; each flower +/- bracteolate. Calyx actinomorphic, cylindrical, 5–10–nerved, tube densely pubescent within near the mouth, 5–10-toothed, the teeth spinose, sometimes recurved and hooked at the tip at least with age, splitting longitudinally, usually persistent or sometimes only ventral 1/2 persistent. Corolla zygomatic, bilabiate, white or purple, tube usually barely exserted beyond calyx, upper lip flat, erect, entire or 2-lobed, lower lip spreading, 3-lobed, median lobe larger and usually emarginate; nectary disk often present ab base of ovary, annular or developed on anterior side only. Stamens 4, in 2 pairs, lower pair longer, included in corolla tube; anther sacs divaricate, becoming confluent; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, 2-carpellate; ovules 1 per ovary lobe, placentation basal-axile; style 1; stigmas 2.

Fruit: Nutlets 4; 1-seeded; ovoid to oblong; minutely reticulate. Seeds with endosperm absent or scanty and oily.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: