Description :

• Tufted, woody, perennial herbs; stems erect or decumbent, simple to much branched, glandular-puberulous and with coarse hairs, leafy
• Leaves alternate, fascicled, linear-lanceolate to suborbicular, sometimes narrowly oblanceolate or obovate, entire or denticulate, rarely serrate, glandular-punctate
• Flowers axillary, bracteate, in corymbose inflorescences, terminal or sometimes lateral, in 1 species very congested
• Bracts adnate to pedicel and at least half of calyx tube, rarely less
• Calyx slightly bilabiate, 5-dentate
• Corolla tubular, slightly bilabiate, 5-lobed, tube funnel-shaped; posterior lip exterior in bud; lobes spreading, glabrous outside, often with clavate hairs around mouth
• Stamens 4, didynamous, exserted; anterior pair arising in throat, exceeding posterior pair which arises a little lower down, filaments of latter pair decurrent to base of tube; anthers synthecate, dorsifixed; staminodes 0
• Nectary small, adnate to one side of ovary base
• Ovary bilocular, oblong; ovules 2 per locule from centre of axis, funicles pulvinate, hollowed, 1 turned up, 1 down; stigma lingulate, flattened, exserted, with 2 marginal bands of stigmatic papillae
• Fruit a septicidal capsule with a short loculicidal split at tip of each valve
• Seeds amber-coloured, turning dull black, ornamented with ± 8 irregularly sinuous longitudinal bands

Nomenclature:

• Tetraselago Junell
  • Junell: 190 (1961)
  • Hilliard & Burtt:175 (1977)
  • Hilliard: 534 (1994)
• Selago L. in part
  • Rolfe: 151 (1901)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : Species 4, highlands of Northern Province and Mpumalanga, W Swaziland and midlands of KwaZulu-Natal