Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Prostrate herbs.

Stems: Stems squarish, red, tips upturned.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite, each pair at right angles to next. Blades +/- circular to broadly ovate, 16-40 mm x 13-40 mm. Surfaces +/- glabrous, upper side glossy green, underside purplish; blades soft and succulent. Margins serrate above middle. Petioles 0.6-3 cm long. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorecense, erect, terminal, verticils 2-6-flowered, widely spaced; pedicels 0.1-0.2" long, each flower +/- bracteolate. Flowers bisexual (perfect) or sometimes unisexual (and then plants gynodioecious or rarely dioecious), usually small. Calyx bilabiate to nearly actinomorphic, cylindrical to campanulate, straight or curved downward, often enlarging in fruit, 5-toothed, splitting longitudinally, usually persistent or sometimes only ventral 1/2 persistent. Corolla strongly zygomorphic, bilabiate, the tube exserted beyond calyx, ca. 0.66' long, white or tinted mauve, speckled red-purple, upper lip erect or reflexed, notched, side lobes 2, earlike, short, 3–4-lobed; lower lip boat–shaped, entire or notched; nectary disk often present at base of ovary, annular or developed on anterior side only. Stamens 4, distinct or connate toward base into a sheath around the style or inserted on corolla tube; anther sacs confluent with 2 cells fertile. Ovary superior, rarely on a gynophore, 2-carpellate, each carpel longitudinally divided, thus 4 +/- distinct segments connate only at the gynobasic style, sometimes ovary merely 4-lobed, ca. 1/2 its length; style arising between lobes, placentation basal-axile; ovules 1 per ovary lobe, anatropous to hemitropous of apotropous; style 1, usually cleft; stigmas 2, sometimes 1 reduced and vestigial, 2-lobed.

Fruit: Fruit are nutlets; usually 4; globose or occasionally cylindrical or ovoid; smooth; granulate; or punctate. Seeds with endosperm absent or scanty and oily.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Forest margins; scrub forest; dry woodland; and partially shaded; stony places.

Elevation Range: