Description:

• Annual, slender herbs; stems simple or ± freely branched, quadrangular, often channelled or ridged, branches opposite
• Leaves opposite, uppermost sometimes alternate, sometimes with smaller leaves fascicled in axils, usually petiolate, rarely sessile, variously ovate to ± linear or obovate to oblong, toothed, lobed or pinnatifid, rarely subentire
• Flowers axillary or terminal, usually in condensed apical racemes, often with very short internodes and appearing umbellate, or solitary; pedicels longer than flowers, often reflexed in fruit; pollinated by oil-collecting bees
• Calyx campanulate, 5-lobed; lobes free nearly to base, usually lanceolate, somewhat unequal, scarcely imbricate in bud
• Corolla sub-bilabiate, 4-lobed, yellow, generally villous outside; tube very short, concave or obsolete; throat short; upper lip smaller than lower one, exterior in bud, very shortly emarginate, usually with reflexed margin and ± well-developed pouch near centre; lower lip 3-lobed, lateral lobes short, broad, usually with subsessile glands towards base and 2 spurs or small pouches at base of lip, sometimes with 2 tooth-like appendages clasping stamen filaments at side of corolla throat; lowermost lobe larger, concave, usually emarginate
• Stamens 2; filaments arising in throat, short, linear, kneed at base, often narrowly winged; anthers unithecate through confluence, usually connivent when mature
• Ovary bilocular, usually ovoid, merging into style; ovules many; style persistent, usually declined, often winged; stigma often capitate, thinly stigmatose
• Fruit a subglobose or ovate capsule, mostly loculicidal, partly septicidal
• Seeds many, brown or black, angular-ovoid or subglobose, reticulate or papillate, sometimes with very narrow, membranous wing

Nomenclature:

• Hemimeris L.f.
  • Linnaeus fil.: 45 (1782, '1781') name conserved
  • Hiern: 164 (1904)
  • Grant: 435 (1938)
  • Merrill: 366 (1938)
  • Greuter et al.: 297 (1994)
  • Steiner: 63 (1996)
  • Mabberley: 335 (1997)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species ± 4, Northern, Western and Eastern Cape (Vanrhynsdorp and Calvinia through coastal districts to Port Elizabeth)