Description :

• Herbs or soft shrublets
• Leaves dentate to entire
• Inflorescences terminal, spike-like, on main and lateral branches in upper part of plant; flowers shortly pedicellate in usually 6-flowered verticils; bracts much smaller than leaves; pedicels ascending
• Calyx bilabiate, 5-toothed; tube short, campanulate; upper tooth much larger than the rest, broadly ovate to subrotund, decurrent on tube; two lateral teeth small, subulate; two lower teeth fused, forming an oblong, emarginate or 2-toothed lip
• Corolla small, bilabiate, mauve to whitish; tube campanulate, slightly concave
• Stamens 4, didynamous, shortly exserted; upper pair arising near base of corolla tube, kneed and with a tuft of hairs near base of filaments; lower pair arising in corolla mouth; anthers 1-thecous
• Disc saucer-shaped, 4-lobed
• Ovary glabrous; style exserted; stigma shortly 2-lobed
• Nutlets globose, mucilaginous when wetted
• x = 8 (6, 9, 11, 13) (aneuploids, high polyploidy, B-chromosomes)

Nomenclature:

• Ocimum L.
  • Linnaeus: 597 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 259 (1754)
  • Bentham: 1 (1832)
  • Bentham: 31 (1848)
  • Bentham: 1171 (1876)
  • Briquet: 369 (1897)
  • Baker: 334 (1900)
  • Brown: 233 (1910)
  • Launert & Schreiber: 20 (1969)
  • Codd: 219 (1985)
  • Paton: 403 (1992)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 30, in the tropics and subtropics of the Old and New World
• Southern Africa : Species 3 in the north/northeastern half