Description :

• Annual or perennial herbs or subshrubs; sometimes wiry and/or appearing leafless
• Leaves alternate, opposite or whorled, variable, sometimes radical
• Flowers in leafy spikes or racemes, or axillary and solitary, or clustered at ends of branches
• Calyx much shorter than corolla tube, rarely oblique; lobes often ciliate, sometimes scabrid
• Corolla cleft down one side to base, 5-lobed, regular or (1)2-lipped, rarely with palate on one lip, rarely with pouch at base; upper lip 3-lobed or of 2 distinct, clawed petals; lower lip 2- or 3-fid
• Stamens attached to base of corolla, rarely higher up; filaments usually cohering, some or all bearded
• Ovary inferior to superior, 2-locular, with 1-many ovules in each locule, on axile placentas; style linear, rarely with hairy collar below stigma; stigma subglobose, 2-lobed, hairy
• Fruit a capsule, 2-valved, often crowned with persistent calyx
• Seeds usually many
• x = 7 (6, 8) (B-chromosomes, aneuploids, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Lobelia L.
  • Linnaeus: 929 (1753)
  • Wimmer: 408, 775 (1953)
  • Wimmer: 855 (1968)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 300, cosmopolitan, mostly tropics and subtropics
• Southern Africa : Species ± 70, all regions