Description :

• Annual or perennial herbs, undershrubs, or sometimes shrubs, with various kinds of indumentum or sometimes nearly glabrous
• Leaves sessile or petiolate, entire or toothed
• Inflorescences terminal or axillary, spike-like, sometimes panicled; flowers in 2-many-flowered verticils, sessile or pedicellate; bracts leaf-like or reduced; bracteoles usually present, linear
• Calyx subequally 5-toothed or rarely ± bilabiate, 5-10-nerved; teeth usually shorter than tube, ovate-acuminate to lanceolate-acuminate, sometimes ending in a short bristle-like point
• Corolla bilabiate; tube straight or curved, sometimes pubescent without and usually annular-pilose near base within; upper lip erect or ascending, usually concave or arched, entire or very shortly emarginate, usually shorter than lower lip; lower lip spreading or deflexed, 3-lobed, with middle lobe the largest
• Stamens 4, didynamous, ascending under the upper lip, lower pair the longer, usually shortly exserted from corolla tube; anthers 2-thecous, with thecae usually divergent and at length divaricate
• Style terete, as long as stamens, equally bifid
• Nutlets ovoid or oblong in outline, often triquetrous, obtuse or rounded at apex
• x = 8, 9, 17 (10, 12, 15) (aneuploids, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Stachys L.
  • Linnaeus: 580 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 253 (1754)
  • Bentham: 525 (1834)
  • Bentham: 462 (1848)
  • Bentham: 1208 (1876)
  • Briquet: 260 (1896)
  • Baker: 465 (1900)
  • Skan: 336 (1910)
  • Codd: 51 (1985)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 300, mainly in subtropical and temperate regions of both hemispheres
• Southern Africa : Species 42, widespread