Description:

• Annual or perennial herbs, erect or ascending, 0.35-0.8 m in height, hispid; stems usually simple
• Leaves opposite, sessile, erect or suberect, linear-lanceolate, entire, thick, hispid
• Flowers opposite, pedicellate, bracteate, in terminal, elongated, rarely branched racemes
• Bracts ± equal to or shorter than pedicels; bracteoles 0
• Calyx 5-dentate, somewhat leathery, glandular-punctate; tube campanulate; lobes subequal, obtuse, valvate
• Corolla campanulate, oblique, 5-lobed, slightly bilabiate; tube narrow at base, dilating and ± funnel-shaped above, hairy on inside at base of upper lip; lobes subequal, or upper 2 smallest, rounded; posterior lobes interior in bud
• Stamens 4, didynamous, arising at top of narrow portion of tube, included; filaments linear, anterior pair twice as long as posterior pair and long-pilose above middle; anthers bithecate; thecae subequal, diverging; staminodes 0
• Ovary bilocular, subovoid, acute, glabrous; ovules many on a thick placenta; style filiform, linear, arching above, glabrous, persistent, equalling or exceeding longer stamens; stigma slightly dilated, flattened
• Fruit an ovoid, loculicidal capsule, equal to or somewhat longer than enclosing calyx
• Seeds many, linear or linear-cuneiform, terete

Nomenclature:

• Gerardiina Engl.
  • Engler: 507, t. 10, G-M. (1897)
  • Hiern: 770 (1898)
  • Hiern: 378 (1904)
  • Philcox: 154 (1990)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Monotypic: Gerardiina angolensis Engl., tropical and southern Africa
• Southern Africa: Northern Province, Mpumalanga and Swaziland