Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennial herbs or shrubs, usually strongly aromatic.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Margins entire to serrate. Petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers 6–10 usually small, in verticillasters, these arranged in racemose, unbranched or branched inflorescences, pedicels recurved, bracts minute, caducous. Calyx actinomorphic, bilabiate, ovoid or campanulate, deflexed in fruit, 10–nerved, upper lip large, broad and flat, strongly reflexed in fruit, lower lip usually 4-toothed, the teeth narrow and pungent, splitting longitudinally, usually persistent of sometimes only ventral 1/2 persistent. Corolla bilabiate, campanulate, glabrous within, upper lip erect, subequally 4-lobed, lower lip slightly longer, curved downward, flattened or concave, entire; nectary disk entire or 2–4-lobed, symmetrical. Stamens 4, in 2 pairs, exserted beyond corolla tube; anther sacs confluent; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, 2-carpellate, placentation basal-axile; ovules 1 per ovary lobe; style 2-lobed; stigmas 2.

Fruit: Nutlets obovoid or globose; smooth or finely rugose; in some species the pericarp swelling and becoming mucilaginous when wet. Seeds with endosperm absent or scanty and oily.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: