Description :

• Soft, perennial herbs, usually decumbent or prostrate
• Leaves petiolate, entire
• Inflorescences dense, spike-like or subcapitate; verticils 4-6-flowered, closely placed; bracts differing from leaves, usually large, ovate to orbicular; flowers very shortly pedicellate
• Calyx tubular-campanulate, subcompressed, 10-nerved, reticulate-veined, bilabiate; upper lip broad, shortly 3-toothed; lower lip narrower with 2 long, subulate teeth
• Corolla tube shortly exserted from calyx; upper lip erect, somewhat hooded, entire; lower lip slightly shorter, deflexed, 3-lobed
• Stamens 4, didynamous, ascending beneath upper lip, lower pair the longer; filaments with a subterminal tooth or claw; anthers 2-thecous
• Style bifid, lobes subulate
• Nutlets ovoid or oblong, keeled, smooth
• x = 7 (aneuploids, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Prunella L.
  • Linnaeus: 600 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 261 (1754) as Brunella
  • Bentham: 409 (1848) as Brunella
  • Bentham: 1203 (1876) as Brunella
  • Briquet: 241 (1896) as Brunella
  • Smith: 162 (1972)
  • Codd: 29 (1985)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 5-7, in temperate regions of both hemispheres
• Southern Africa : Species 1: * Prunella vulgaris L. from Europe, naturalised in the midlands of KwaZulu-Natal, occurring in wet vleis or along moist forest margins