Description :

• Annual herbs, sometimes aquatic; stems slender, procumbent, weakly ascending, or erect, simple or branched, quadrangular, usually glabrous, sometimes rooting at nodes
• Leaves opposite, decussate, petiolate, ovate to lanceolate, ± serrate, pinnately veined
• Flowers axillary, pedicellate, usually 2-6 together, fascicled or on minute leafless branches, or sometimes solitary; pedicels ebracteolate, somewhat reflexed in fruit
• Bracts narrowly linear
• Calyx tubular, bilabiate, 5-lobed, narrowly winged along veins, markedly so at fruiting, accrescent; lobes shorter than tube
• Corolla tubular, bilabiate, 4-lobed; tube cylindrical below, widening slightly above; upper lip entire, exterior in bud; lower lip larger, with 3 subequal lobes
• Stamens 4, didynamous; filaments arising in corolla throat; posterior pair included, with filaments short; anterior pair with filaments longer, arched and connivent under upper corolla lip, each with small boss-like appendage at base; anthers bithecate, usually cohering in pairs; thecae usually confluent at apex
• Nectary prominent, saucer-shaped
• Ovary bilocular, oblong, dorsiventral, hairy at apex; locules with unicellular hairs within; ovules many; style semiterete, exserted, persistent; stigma of two membranous lobes
• Fruit a narrowly oblong-ellipsoid capsule, septicidal or poricidal
• Seeds small, many, pale yellow; testa with anchor-like thickening on some epidermal cell walls; endosperm alveolate (bothrospermous)
• x = 8 (9, 17 - 1 report each) (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Torenia L.
  • Linnaeus: 619 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 270 (1754)
  • Philcox: 56 (1990) in part
  • Fischer: 332 (1992)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 40, tropical; mainly SE Asia, Indian Ocean islands, and Africa
• Southern Africa : Species 1: Torenia thouarsii (Cham. & Schltdl.) Kuntze, N Botswana, Gauteng, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal (Tongaland)
  • This species also in South America