Description :

• Perennial herbs, mostly erect and harshly pubescent
• Leaves opposite or subopposite, mostly ± toothed, sessile or petiolate
• Flowers irregular, in terminal or axillary, simple spikes or spicate racemes, arranged in a spirally alternate or pseudosecund manner on a mostly elongate rachis; bracts small; bracteoles minute or 0
• Calyx with 5-ribbed tube, 5-toothed or almost truncate, persistent, accrescent, usually contracted and ± beaked at mouth
• Corolla white, pink, mauve or purple; 5-lobed, ± 2-lipped, sometimes hairy within; lobes obovate
• Stamens 4, didynamous, arising at middle of corolla tube, sometimes a staminode present; filaments linear, longer than anthers
• Ovary 2- or 4-locular; style ± as long as corolla tube, unequally 2-lobed
• Fruit dry, enclosed in calyx tube, separating into two 2-locular, 2-seeded, or by abortion 1-seeded, pyrenes
• Seeds without endosperm
• x = 6 (polyploidy

Nomenclature:

• Priva Adans.
  • Adanson: 505 (1763)
  • Moldenke: 1 (1936)
  • Phillips: 638 (1951)
  • Verdcourt: 20 (1992)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 20, tropical and subtropical Asia, Asia Minor, Africa and parts of America
• Southern Africa : Species 5, widespread