Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Aromatic subshrubs, sometimes woody only at base.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Blades often large, usually sagittate, deltate, or hastate. Surfaces pubescent with usually branched hairs; blades, usually somewhat rugose. Petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in open or sometimes dense axillary cymes, these pedunculate or sessile in the upper leaf axils, arranged in panicles, each flower +/- bracteolate. Calyx actinomorphic, campanulate, often enlarging in fruit, 5-toothed, the teeth subequal, sometimes coherent, splitting longitudinally, usually persistent or sometimes only ventral 1/2 persistent. Corolla zygomorphic, bilabiate, tube narrowly funnelform, curved, exserted beyond calyx, pubescent in a ring within, 5-lobed, lobes broad and rounded, upper lip 2-lobed, lower lip 3-lobed, median lobe larger than lateral ones, emarginate, lateral lobes entire; nectary disk often present at base of ovary, annular or developed on anterior side only. Stamens 4, subequal or in 2 pairs, usually exserted beyond or sometimes included in corolla tube; anther sacs divergent; 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; black; ovoid; hard; the surface shiny to puberulent and smooth. Seeds with endosperm absent or scanty and oily.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: