Description:

• Annual or perennial soft herbs
• Leaves ± cordate, toothed or incised
• Inflorescences usually simple, of one to several, spaced or fairly crowded verticils; verticils few- to many-flowered; bracts broad-based, often clasping; bracteoles not evident
• Calyx tubular-campanulate, usually 5-nerved with 5 equal or subequal teeth, uppermost often the longest
• Corolla bilabiate, white, pink or purple; tube dilated towards mouth, usually longer than calyx; upper lip ascending, concave, ovate or oblong, usually entire; lower lip spreading or deflexed, obovate, emarginate, with or without small lateral lobes
• Stamens 4, didynamous, anterior pair longer, arcuate in upper lip; anthers 2-thecous, divaricate, often hirsute on back
• Style with stigma 2-lobed
• Nutlets oblong, triquetrous, somewhat truncate at apex, smooth or tuberculate
• x = 9 (8) (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Lamium L.
  • Linnaeus: 579 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 252 (1754)
  • Bentham: 503 (1848)
  • Bentham: 1210 (1876)
  • Briquet: 254 (1896)
  • Baker: 468 (1900)
  • Ball: 147 (1972)
  • Codd: 47 (1985)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 40, mainly in the North Temperate zone of the Old World
• Southern Africa: Species 1: *Lamium amplexicaule (L.) Benth. a native of Europe, is now a widespread weed and fairly widely distributed in gardens and waste places