Description:

• Perennial herbs or small shrubs, markedly pubescent
• Leaves often rugose, toothed
• Inflorescences usually simple, of several to many verticils; verticils few- to many-flowered; bracts similar to leaves; bracteoles linear to spathulate, ascending, often somewhat spine-tipped or subulate
• Calyx funnel-shaped, 10-nerved, 10-20-toothed, villous, glandular; teeth subequal or unequal, spreading, ovate-deltoid, shortly acuminate or narrowed into an awn
• Corolla bilabiate; tube shorter than or equalling calyx, with a ring of hairs in throat; lower lip 3-lobed with median lobe the largest, emarginate
• Stamens 4, didynamous, ascending, anterior pair longer and shortly exserted; filaments arising near throat, villous; anthers 2-thecous, thecae diverging
• Style subequally 2-lobed, shortly exserted
• Nutlets ovoid-oblong, rounded at apex, smooth
• x = 11 (7, 9, 10) (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Ballota L.
  • Linnaeus: 582 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 253 (1754)
  • Bentham: 592 (1834)
  • Bentham: 517 (1848)
  • Bentham: 1212 (1876)
  • Briquet: 259 (1896)
  • Baker: 472 (1900)
  • Skan: 368 (1910)
  • Patzak: 149 (1972)
  • Codd: 49 (1985)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 35, concentrated around the Mediterranean and adjoining Asia Minor
• Southern Africa: Species 1: Ballota africana (L.) Benth. in arid parts of the winter-rainfall region as far north as the Orange River and S Namibia, also in Free State and Eastern Cape