Description :

• Annual or perennial herbs or subshrubs; stems erect, decumbent or prostrate, sometimes with axillary leaf tufts (incipient branches, not leaf fascicles), usually winged or ridged by decurrent leaf bases; hairs on main parts (not inside corolla tube) thin-walled
• Leaves opposite, and then bases sometimes connate, usually becoming alternate upwards, variously shaped between broadly ovate and linear, oblanceolate and spathulate, rarely rhomboid, bases usually narrowed but rarely petiolate, usually dentate in upper half, often glandular-punctate, somewhat pubescent or glabrous, rarely villous
• Flowers small, sessile, bracteate, in a spike, or several forming a corymb or narrow panicle
• Bracts adnate to calyx tube, base often inflated, usually indurated with age, persistent
• Calyx deeply 5-lobed, more than halfway, posterior lobe shortest, lobes narrowly triangular, usually becoming indurated with age
• Corolla tubular, bilabiate, 5-lobed; tube funnel-shaped or cylindrical, glabrous outside; posterior lip usually 2-lobed, sometimes apparently 4-lobed when lateral lobes of anterior lip are ascending, exterior in bud, with yellow/orange (perhaps sometimes white) patch at base and briefly extending down back of throat, bearded there with 1-celled, clavate hairs, these sometimes extending to the usually 3-lobed, sometimes apparently simple, anterior lip
• Stamens 4, didynamous, arising near top of corolla tube; posterior filaments usually decurrent down tube; anthers synthecate, dorsifixed, posterior ones either exserted or held in mouth, anterior ones exserted, rarely included
• Nectary small, adnate on posterior side of ovary
• Ovary bilocular, elliptical-oblong, base slightly oblique; 1 pendulous ovule per locule; style filiform, merging imperceptibly into lingulate stigma with marginal bands of stigmatic papillae
• Fruit a pair of soft-walled cocci, convex on outer face
• Seeds elliptical, compressed, convex on one face, ± plane on the other, smooth or rugulose

Nomenclature:

• Pseudoselago Hilliard
  • Hilliard: 243 (1995)
  • Hilliard: 315 (1990) under Selago section Spureae
  • Hilliard: 1 (1999)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : Species 28, mainly southwestern areas of Western Cape, extending into Northern Cape (Calvinia) and Eastern Cape (Humansdorp)