Description :

• Perennial herbs or shrublets, or sometimes annual, base sometimes woody, usually eventually bushy though often flowering as seedlings; stems erect or decumbent, sometimes sprawling or diffuse, usually branched from base, rarely simple, leafy; pubescence always patent, hairs gland-tipped or not
• Leaves opposite or sometimes alternate above, usually elliptical to ovate, sometimes broadly ovate or rhomboid, margins deeply and coarsely toothed
• Flowers in racemes, capitate or elongate, often panicled, always erect
• Bracts longer than broad, often leaf-like, usually adnate to pedicel only, or sometimes to extreme base of calyx in uppermost flowers
• Calyx obscurely bilabiate, lobed almost or quite to base, membranous
• Corolla tubular, bilabiate, 5-lobed, membranous; tube cylindrical and widening rapidly, rarely slightly above, sometimes funnel-shaped, often glandular-pubescent outside; posterior lip 2-lobed, exterior in bud; anterior lip 3-lobed; lobes entire; orange/yellow patch at base of posterior lip extending down back of tube almost to base and there either glabrous or bearded with unicellular clavate hairs
• Stamens 4, either all exserted or the posterior pair included or appearing in mouth of tube; posterior filaments very briefly to strongly decurrent down corolla tube; anthers synthecate, dorsifixed; staminodes 0
• Nectary small, on shorter side of ovary base
• Ovary bilocular, elliptical, base slightly oblique, either glandular-puberulous or glabrous on upper part; ovules up to 14 per locule; style filiform, passing gradually into flattened, lingulate stigma with 2 marginal bands of stigmatic papillae, well exserted
• Fruit a septicidal capsule with a short, loculicidal split at top of each valve
• Seeds elliptical or slightly angled, mostly pallid amber or cream, rarely greenish or bluish grey, sinuously wrinkled in longitudinal bands; testa tightly investing endosperm
• x = 6, 7 (1 report each)

Nomenclature:

• Trieenea Hilliard
  • Hilliard: 489 (1989)
  • Hilliard: 418 (1994)
• Phyllopodium Benth. in part
  • Hiern: 319 (1904)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : Species 9, South Africa, Western and Eastern Cape mountains from Cederberg, with 7 species, southwards, then eastwards, 1 species extending to Great Winterhoek Mountains, northwest of Uitenhage