Description :

• Small, often delicate herbs, sometimes creeping; usually in moist places
• Leaves sometimes radical, sessile or petioled, variable
• Flowers solitary and axillary or sometimes in racemes
• Calyx shorter than corolla tube, glabrous or hairy
• Corolla 5-lobed or bilabiate, glabrous; tube funnel-shaped or cylindric; upper lip of 2 linear lobes; lower lip of 3 oblong lobes, when 5-lobed then all lobes oblong-linear and sometimes unequal
• Stamens arising from base of corolla tube; filaments connate, glabrous; anthers cohering, not bearded or 1 or more with 1 or 2 setae at apex, rarely hairy on back
• Ovary inferior or partly superior, more or less ovoid, obconic or ellipsoid, with many ovules on axile placentas; style linear; stigma subglobose, 2-lobed, glandular-hairy
• Fruit a capsule, crowned with persistent calyx
• Seeds subglobose, with somewhat crustaceous testa
• x = 7, 11 (1 report each) (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Wimmerella L.Serra, M.B.Crespo & Lammers
  • Serra et al.: 415 (1999)
• Laurentia Mich. ex Adans.
  • Adanson.: 135 (1763) in part

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : Species 10, KwaZulu-Natal, Northern, Western and Eastern Cape