Description :

• Erect, annual or perennial herbs, or subshrubs, variously hairy
• Leaves with lower ones usually opposite or subopposite, upper ones usually alternate, sessile
• Flowers pedicellate, in a bracteate, one-sided cyme or in a branching system of ebracteate, very lax cymes
• Calyx deeply divided into 5 or 6 lobes; lobes ovate to lanceolate, with rounded to cordate bases, apices narrow to cuspidate, often winged; strongly accrescent in fruit
• Corolla blue or white; tube campanulate to funnel-shaped, throat naked; lobes 5 or 6, ovate-acuminate or broadly triangular, often spreading or reflexed
• Stamens arising on corolla tube, sessile or with very short, flattened filaments; anthers oblong or linear-lanceolate, with connectives prolonged above, the whole androecium converging above to form a cone with connective prolongations twisted together at apex, connectives with long, shaggy hairs on their dorsal surface
• Ovary 4-lobed, 4-locular; gynobase pyramidal; style gynobasic or terminal, long and subulate; stigma small, subglobose
• Fruit of 4 ovoid nutlets, smooth or variously ornamented, or of a single, sessile nutlet; nutlets enclosed in enlarged calyx
• x = 12, 11

Nomenclature:

• Trichodesma R.Br.
  • Brown: 496 (1810) name conserved
  • Lehmann: 192 (1818)
  • Candolle: 171 (1846)
  • Bentham: 845 (1876)
  • Boissier: 280 (1879)
  • Gürke: 99 (1897)
  • Baker & Wright: 44 (1906)
  • Brand: 19 (1921)
  • Riedl: 219 (1967)
  • Brummitt: 94 (1990)
  • Nowicke & Miller: 24 (1991)
  • Verdcourt: 91 (1991)
• Borraginoides Boehm.
  • Boehmer: 18 (1760).
• Pollichia Medik.
  • Medikus: 247 (1783).
• Friedrichsthalia Fenzl
  • Fenzl: 53 (1839).
• Leiocarya Hochst.
  • Hochstetter: 30 (1844)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 45, mainly in tropical and subtropical regions of Africa to Asia and Australia
• Southern Africa : Species 4, not recorded from Western Cape