Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Apparently usually not aromatic, erect perennial herbs, somewhat woody toward base.

Stems: Stems sparingly branched, densely tomentose.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Blades coriaceous and often rugose. Margins entire, crenulate, serrate, or dentate. Petiolate or sessile. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers subsessile, in simple, often dense, terminal racemes, 2 flowers per verticillaster, each flower +/- bracteolate. Calyx actinomorphic, cylindrical, closed at maturity or nearly so, 5-toothed, the teeth short or rudimentary, splitting longitudinally, usually persistent or sometimes only ventral 1/2 persistent. Corolla zygomorphic, bilabiate, white or sometimes tinged purple externally, the tube narrowly funnelform, upper lip entire, undulate-crisped, lower lip much larger, 3-lobed, the lobes suborbicular, middle lobe largest, margins strongly undulate-crisped; 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; stigmas 2.

Fruit: Nutlets 1-seeded; pale to dark brown; dry; narrowly obconical; 3-angled; the inner 2 faces flat; the outer one convex; coherent; pubescent apically; enclosed in the persistent closed calyx; pericarp thick and hard. Seeds with endosperm absent or scanty and oily.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: