Description:

• Compact, perennial, semiwoody herbs or undershrubs, many-stemmed from a woody rootstock; stems erect or ± trailing, usually branched at or near base, leafy
• Leaves opposite, alternate, or whorled, ovate-elliptic to lanceolate or linear, incised-dentate to entire
• Flowers solitary in axils of upper leaves, subsessile to shortly pedicellate, bibracteolate at or near base of calyx
• Calyx tubular, 5-lobed; tube campanulate or funnel-shaped, 10-nerved; lobes ± equal, triangular-lanceolate, equalling or rather longer than tube, somewhat accrescent
• Corolla tubular, somewhat bilabiate, 5-lobed, pilose; tube funnel-shaped, somewhat ventricose, exserted; limb spreading; lobes obovate, entire, subequal, the 2 posterior ones interior, shorter than tube
• Stamens 4, didynamous, included; posterior pair short, arising below middle of corolla tube; anterior pair longer, arising near base of tube; filaments filiform, hairy at least towards base; anthers bithecate, free; thecae separate, diverging, mucronulate at base, with one usually narrower than other
• Ovary bilocular, ovate to globular, compressed; ovules many per locule; style filiform, glabrous, somewhat exserted, incurved above, persistent; stigma short, bifid, sometimes also slightly thickened or subglobose
• Fruit an acute or acuminate, loculicidal capsule, flattened longitudinally, therefore appearing unilaterally winged, included in persistent calyx
• Seeds many, obovoid-cylindrical; testa membranous, reticulate

Nomenclature:

• Graderia Benth.
  • Bentham: 521 (1846)
  • Hiern: 388 (1904) under Bopusia C.Presl
  • Melchior: 603 (1932)
  • Philcox: 149 (1990)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 5, Africa and Socotra
• Southern Africa: Species 3, widespread in eastern and southern parts: roughly from Pilgrim's Rest (Mpumalanga) to Riversdale (Western Cape); not in Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho or Northern Cape