Description :

• Perennial herbs or soft shrubs, semisucculent
• Leaves often crowded on short shoots, usually sparingly toothed in upper half
• Inflorescences terminal on main and lateral branches; flowers solitary in axils of persistent bracts; bracts semisucculent, not sharply differentiated from leaves, becoming progressively smaller towards apex of inflorescence
• Calyx bilabiate, 5-toothed; tube campanulate; upper tooth larger than lower 4, ovate-lanceolate to broadly ovate; lower 4 teeth subequal, narrowly deltoid, acuminate
• Corolla bilabiate, 4-lobed; tube campanulate to long-cylindric; upper lip erect, oblong, emarginate; lower lip concave, spreading to reflexed; lateral lobes strap-shaped, spreading on each side of lower lip
• Stamens 4, didynamous, declinate, arising at throat of corolla tube; filaments free to base; anthers 1-thecous
• Disc small, swollen into a gland in front
• Style bifid
• Nutlets ellipsoid

Nomenclature:

• Thorncroftia N.E.Br.
  • Brown: 281 (1912)
  • Codd: 237 (1985)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : Species 3, endemic in Northern Province and Mpumalanga