Description :

• Small annual herbs; stems laxly leafy, often with axillary leaf tufts (incipient branches), glandular above, with retrorse, eglandular hairs below
• Leaves opposite below, alternate above, mainly radical, elliptical, tapering into broad petiole or briefly narrowed to base (cauline leaves), entire to sparsely dentate, pubescent on upper surface, glabrous below
• Flowers in a lax raceme, often panicled
• Bracts adnate to pedicel and most of calyx tube, usually with coarse, patent eglandular hairs on margins
• Calyx bilabiate, ± plicate at anthesis; lips short, posterior lip shortly 3-toothed; anterior lip scarcely lobed, membranous; lobes shorter than tube, midrib of each lobe thickened
• Corolla tubular, bilabiate, 5-lobed, resupinate by curvature of upper part of tube; tube narrowly cylindrical below, widening towards throat; posterior lip 4-lobed, exterior in bud, inclining downwards, bearded with clavate hairs at base and down back of throat; anterior lip entire, erect
• Stamens 2 (posterior pair); filaments decurrent to base of tube forming a channel enveloping style; anthers synthecate, dorsifixed, well exserted, connective glandular; staminodes 2, small
• Nectary small, completely adnate to base of ovary on one side
• Ovary bilocular, oblong-elliptical, glandular or not on sutures; ovules many (more than 20 per locule); style passing gradually into lingulate stigma with two marginal bands of stigmatic papillae, exserted
• Fruit a septicidal capsule with a short loculicidal split at tip of each apiculate valve
• Seeds slightly longer than broad, somewhat angled, irregularly colliculate, ± opaque, greyish when young, later pallid; testa tightly investing endosperm

Nomenclature:

• Reyemia Hilliard
  • Hilliard: 297 (1992)
  • Hilliard: 522 (1994)
• Zaluzianskya F.W.Schmidt in part
  • Hiern: 353 (1904)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : Species 2: Reyemia chasmanthiflora Hilliard and R. nemesioides (Diels) Hilliard, Western Cape (Calvinia, Sutherland and Fraserburg Districts)