Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Herbs or shrubs.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite with pairs at right angles to the next. Margins dentate. Petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in verticillasters 6- to many flowered, in racemes or panicles; bracts early deciduous or absent; flowers pedicellate. Calyx actinomorphic, occasionally bilabiate, ovoid-campanulate to campanulate, 5-toothed or conspicuously 2-lipped, posterior tooth larger; fruiting calyx dilated, declinate or recurved, throat glabrous or villous. Corolla zygomorphic, much exserted, erect or recurved, 2-lipped; upper lip (3-or) 4-lobed strongly reflexed; lower lip entire elongated, navicular, narrowed at base; nectary disk often present at base of ovary, annular or developed on anterior side only. Stamens 4, declinate, included within lower lip; filaments connate or free, rarely adnate to corolla tube; anther cells apex confluent, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits, occasionally 1 theca reduced or absent or the 2 thecae confluent, occasionally the connective elongate and thus separating the thecae. 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; ovules 1 per ovary lobe, placentation basal-axile, anatropous to hemitropous or apotropous; style 1, arising between ovary lobes, apex equally 2-cleft; stigmas 2, sometimes 1 reduced and vestigial.

Fruit: Nutlets 1-seeded; ovoid to globose; smooth; tuberculate or not. Seeds with endosperm absent or scanty and oily.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: