Description:

• Annual or perennial herbs or subshrubs
• Leaves entire or toothed
• Inflorescences terminal, of spaced few- or densely many-flowered, often glomerate verticils; bracts leaf-like, becoming smaller towards apex of inflorescence; bracteoles linear, often bristle-like and spine-tipped, arcuate and often conspicuous at base of verticil
• Calyx as long as or shorter than corolla tube, tubular-campanulate, 10- or 11-nerved, slightly oblique or symmetrical at mouth, equally or unequally 5-11-toothed
• Corolla 2-lipped; tube slightly exceeding calyx, tubular, often with a ring of hairs or glands within ± the middle, pubescent without; upper lip ascending or slightly arched, almost flat, without a fringe of hairs; lower lip spreading, 3-lobed, with middle lobe the largest
• Stamens 4, didymous, arising ± at same level near middle of corolla tube, included within tube, held together by intertwining hairs; filaments of posterior pair ± straight, those of anterior pair recurved; anthers obovoid or oblong, 1-thecous by confluence, bearing a glandular crest
• Ovary 4-lobed, truncate and glandular on truncate surface; style hairy, included with anthers, entire, oblique at apex
• Nutlets obovoid, triquetrous, truncate at apex

Nomenclature:

• Acrotome Benth. ex Endl.
  • Endlicher: 627 (1838)
  • Bentham: 1206 (1876)
  • Briquet: 229 (1896)
  • Baker: 471 (1900)
  • Skan: 334 (1910)
  • Launert & Schreiber: 5 (1969)
  • Codd: 19 (1985)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 8, Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 6, widespread, absent from Western Cape