Description:

• Shrublets or shrubs
• Leaves opposite or in whorls of 3(4), rarely alternate, entire or variously crenate, toothed or lobed, often scabrid and rugose, mostly aromatic
• Flowers sometimes irregular, arranged in lax to dense, globose spikes which become ± cylindric as fruit ripens, each flower supported by a bract
• Calyx campanulate or compressed, 2-4-lobed, 4-toothed or ± truncate, 2-keeled, somewhat accrescent and ultimately 2-valved, enclosing and sometimes adhering to fruit
• Corolla white, greenish or creamy yellow; 4-lobed or sub-bilabiate; tube variable
• Stamens 4, didynamous, arising near middle of corolla tube, included or somewhat exserted; anthers with parallel thecae, often longer than filaments
• Ovary 2-locular; style with terminal, oblique or recurved, thickened stigma
• Axis of fruiting spike with scars close
• Fruit small, with dry epicarp, readily separating into 2 1-seeded pyrenes
• Seeds without endosperm
• x = 6 (8, 9) (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Lippia L.
  • Linnaeus: 633 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 282 (1754)
  • Pearson: 192 (1901)
  • Phillips: 636 (1951)
  • Verdcourt: 27 (1992)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 200, tropical Africa and America
• Southern Africa: Species 6, indigenous, widespread except in Western Cape