Description:

• Shrubs, suffrutices, perennial or annual herbs, glandular or rarely clad in scales, aromatic, often foetid; stems leafy
• Leaves opposite, often alternate upwards, sometimes pseudofasciculate or crowded on very short brachyblasts, entire to deeply divided, not decurrent
• Flowers solitary in axils of leaves or bracts, grouped in racemose inflorescences
• Bracts very rare, never adnate to pedicel or calyx
• Calyx 5-lobed almost to base (rarely divided ± halfway), almost regular; lobes various in shape, usually entire, sometimes toothed, pubescent
• Corolla ± 5-lobed; tubular, nearly regular to distinctly bilabiate; tube cylindrical, abruptly expanded near apex, mouth often round, sometimes compressed; limb: posterior lip usually 2-lobed, exterior in bud; anterior lip 3-lobed; lobes spreading, orbicular to oblong or cuneate, often entire, sometimes retuse to 2-lobed, usually glandular outside, with glistening glands and/or glandular hairs, rarely scales, inside with a broad transverse, V-shaped band of unicellular, clavate hairs in throat, usually extending a bit on to base of anterior lip
• Stamens 4, rarely anterior pair 0 or much reduced, didynamous; filaments arising in swollen part of tube, posterior ones strongly decurrent and at least these pubescent; anthers synthecate, dorsifixed, usually included, anterior pair rarely just visible in throat or very shortly exserted
• Nectary apparently annular, ± swollen on one side, sometimes resulting in a conspicuous lateral gland
• Ovary bilocular, ± deltoid, usually glandular; ovules many per locule; stigma very short, minutely bifid, included
• Fruit a septicidal capsule with a short loculicidal split at tip of each valve
• Seeds ± oblong, reddish to greyish brown, not ribbed; testa thin, reticulate, tightly investing endosperm, rarely testa patterned with transversely elongated pits in a chequer-board pattern
• x = 6 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Jamesbrittenia Kuntze
  • Kuntze: 461 (1891)
  • Hemsley & Skan: 298 (1906)
  • Andrews: 137 (1956)
  • Hilliard: 84 (1994)
• Sutera Roth
  • Roth: 291 (1821) not of 1807, in part
  • Hiern: 243 (1904)
  • Merxmüller & Roessler: 43 (1967)
• Lyperia Benth.
  • Bentham: 377 (1836) in part, excl. lectotype
  • Hilliard: 90 (1994)
• Peliostomum Benth. in part
  • Hiern: 133 (1904)
• Chaenostoma Benth. in part
  • Thellung: 408 (1915)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 83, 1 from Egypt and Sudan to Indian subcontinent, rest in Africa, Angola and Zambia southwards
• Southern Africa: Species 74, in all areas but with more species in the western than the eastern half