Description:

• Shrubs, shrublets, rarely herbs
• Stems erect, scandent or occasionally prostrate, usually tomentose or scabrid-hairy or sparsely to densely prickly
• Leaves opposite or in whorls of 3(4), entire or toothed, usually rugose, mostly aromatic, usually glandular-punctate
• Flowers mostly irregular, solitary in axils of bracts, arranged in dense, cylindric or subglobose spikes
• Calyx small, membranous, equally 4-toothed, 4-ribbed, sometimes 2-lipped; tube cylindric or campanulate
• Corolla yellow, purple, blue, mauve or white; sub-bilabiate, 4- or 5-lobed; tube cylindric
• Stamens 4, didynamous, arising ± in middle of corolla tube, included; anthers ovate
• Ovary 2-locular; style less than half as long as corolla tube, with thickend, oblique or sublateral stigma
• Axis of fruiting spike with scars ± scattered
• Fruit drupaceous, sometimes globose, 2-locular or separating when ripe into 2 1-seeded pyrenes
• Seeds without albumen
• x = 11 (6, 7, 8, 13, 17) (aneuploids, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Lantana L.
  • Linnaeus: 626 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 275 (1754)
  • Pearson: 189 (1901)
  • Phillips: 636 (1951)
  • Moldenke & Moldenke: 212 (1983)
  • Verdcourt: 37 (1992)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 150, tropical America, tropical Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 4, indigenous, *Lantana camara L., a native of tropical America, is a widespread, noxious weed