Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Annual or perennial herbs.

Stems: Stems slender, erect to prostrate, often quadrangular, occasionally terete (cylindrical).

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Margins entire, crenate, or serrate. Petioles present or absent. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers solitary in the leaf axils or toward the ends of the branches and forming a terminal raceme, pedicels often reflexed in fruit. Flowers bisexual (perfect), pedicels present; bracteoles absent. . Calyx lobes 5, linear to subulate or narrowly lanceolate. Corolla bilabiate, upper lip overlapping lower lip in bud, erect, entire or 2-lobed, lower lip wider than upper lip, 3-lobed, the lobes unequal, the tube cylindrical or sometimes flaring toward the throat. Stamens (2)4, in 2 pairs, the upper 2 inserted in the corolla tube, the lower 2 inserted near the throat or reduced to staminodes; lower filaments long and arched with a basal, tooth-like, linear to clavate appendage, the upper ones short; anther sacs divaricate. Ovary superior, carpels 1, 2-carpellate, 2-locular, placentation axile; ovules orthotropous, unitegmic, tenuinucellate; style 1; stigma 1, 2-lobed.

Fruit: Capsules globose to oblong; septicidal. Seeds numerous; variously sculpted.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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