Description :

• Shrublets, suffrutices, perennial or rarely annual herbs; stems erect, decumbent or prostrate; hairs on stems, leaves, bracts and calyx with sculptured walls
• Leaves usually alternate, sometimes opposite near base, and alternate upwards, rarely opposite throughout, often fascicled, small, narrow, oblong, elliptical or spathulate, entire or sometimes toothed
• Flowers sessile, subsessile, or shortly pedicellate, bracteate, in a spike or raceme, congested or elongated, solitary or aggregated into corymbs or elongate panicles, often elongating in fruit
• Bracts usually adnate to pedicel and calyx tube, sometimes free
• Calyx tubular, ± regular to irregular, shortly to deeply (2)3-5-lobed; tube broad or narrow; posterior lobe often narrower and/or shorter than others, or lobes sometimes subequal
• Corolla tubular, usually bilabiate and 5-lobed, rarely 4-lobed and then rotate, without yellow/orange patch; tube often funnel-shaped, sometimes cylindrical, usually glabrous, sometimes pubescent; limb always glabrous inside; posterior lip 2- or 1-lobed, exterior in bud, glabrous; anterior lip 3-lobed; lobes oblong or obovate
• Stamens usually 4 (2 in 1 species or sometimes 0), didynamous, arising at various depths within corolla tube; filaments subterete or linear, posterior ones decurrent down tube (except in 1 species); anthers synthecate, dorsifixed; posterior ones in throat, mouth, or exserted; anterior ones usually at least shortly exserted (all anthers deeply included in 1 species); staminodes 0-4 (reduction of stamens to staminodes is fairly common, especially in very small flowers, forming functionally female flowers)
• Nectary adnate on posterior side of ovary base
• Ovary usually bilocular (occasionally unilocular in one species), subglobose or ovoid; ovules 1 per locule, pendulous; style filiform, merging into lingulate stigma with 2 marginal bands of stigmatic papillae
• Fruit a pair of ± equal, ovate or oblong, hard-walled, indehiscent cocci (rarely with 1 coccus aborted), sometimes held within accrescent calyx, often separating at maturity, rarely held together by common pericarp or fused; cocci convex on outer face, plane on other; pericarp smooth or rugulose
• Seeds usually cylindrical, sometimes with spurious cells which coalesce, at times, to form cavities
• x = 7 (1 report)

Nomenclature:

• Selago L.
  • Linnaeus: 629 (1753)
  • Bentham: 1128 (1876)
  • Rolfe: 129 (1901)
  • Brenan: 28 (1954)
  • Merxmüller & Roessler: 3 (1967)
  • Hilliard: 314 (1983)
  • Hilliard: 315 (1990)
  • Philcox: 170 (1990)
  • Hilliard: 1 (1994)
  • Hilliard: 361 (1995)
  • Hilliard: 277 (1996)
  • Hilliard: 106 (1997)
  • Hilliard: 221 (1998)
  • Hilliard: 1 (1999)
• Walafrida E.Mey.
  • Meyer: 272 (1838)
  • Rolfe: 116 (1901)
  • Brenan: 28 (1954)
  • Merxmüller & Roessler: 4 (1967)
  • Hilliard: 315 (1990)
  • Philcox: 165 (1990)
  • Hilliard: 106 (1997)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 190, few in tropical Africa, mainly in southern Africa, also in Madagascar
• Southern Africa : Widespread, but mostly in Western and Eastern Cape, few in Namibia and Botswana