Description :

• Robust, erect, usually biennial herbs, mainly unbranched, pubescent
• Leaves entire, variously shaped, toothed or lobed, basal ones forming a rosette, others alternate, very rarely opposite, decurrent
• Flowers solitary or in groups of 2-5, axillary, bracteate, in lax to dense terminal raceme, shortly pedicellate, sometimes bibracteolate at base
• Calyx equally 5-lobed, lobes imbricate in bud, glandular hairy
• Corolla barely tubular, subregular, 5-lobed, usually yellow; tube very short, narrow or sometimes somewhat campanulate; lobes rotate, broad and ± equal, upper lobes exterior in bud
• Stamens 4 or 5, sometimes 4 fertile and 1 staminode; filaments usually villous; anthers of 2 kinds: posterior ones always reniform and transversely medifixed, anterior ones similar or not (in * V. virgatum anthers oblong, decurrent or at least obliquely inserted on filament); anthers unithecate by confluence
• Ovary bilocular; ovules many; style elongated, entire, thickened towards stigmatose apex
• Fruit a globular, septicidally bivalved capsule; valves usually bifid, exposing central placentiferous column
• Seeds ovoid or oblong, alveolate with hollows in 6-9 longitudinal rows, not winged
• x = 8, 9, 15 (7, 11, 12, 13, 17) (B-chromosomes - 1 report, aneuploids, high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Verbascum L.
  • Linnaeus: 177 (1753)
  • Hiern: 137 (1904)
  • Ferguson: 205 (1972)
  • Wells et al.: 658 (1986)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 360; mainly Old World, northern temperate regions
• Southern Africa : Species 1: * Verbascum virgatum Stokes, possibly naturalised in Lesotho, Western and Eastern Cape, and perhaps others, sporadic garden escapes