Description:

• Annual herbs; stems simple or branched, erect or ascending, glabrous or glandular-pilose
• Leaves usually opposite below, becoming alternate above, linear, elliptic or lanceolate, entire, shortly petiolate to sessile, pinnately veined
• Flowers in terminal, leafy or bracteate racemes, or solitary-axillary, pedicellate
• Calyx deeply and very unequally 5-lobed, with posterior lobe longest, valvate, equal to or longer than corolla tube
• Corolla bilabiate, 5-lobed; tube cylindrical or somewhat urceolate, with broad pouch on anterior side at base, wide-mouthed, villous within; lips subequal and erecto-patent, posterior one 2-lobed, exterior in bud; anterior one somewhat longer than posterior, with prominent basal palate occluding mouth of tube, 3-lobed; lobes entire
• Stamens 4, didynamous, with adjacent pairs of anthers marginally coherent, included; staminode minute
• Ovary bilocular, ovoid, gibbous; locules unequal; ovules many; style simple, filiform; stigma capitate
• Fruit an ovoid to oblong, leathery, glandular-pubescent capsule; septum erect, sinuate; posterior locule dehiscing by single apical pore with irregular teeth, anterior one by 2 such pores
• Seeds somewhat flattened, dorsal face convex, ± smooth, usually keeled, margin produced into a narrow wing; ventral face flat, finely tuberculate, with a wide, papillate border or rarely wing parallel to margin
• x = 7, 8 (6, 15) (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Misopates Raf.
  • Rafinesque: 158 (1840)
  • Pennell: 95 (1921)
  • Webb: 224 (1972)
  • Sutton: 145, microfiche: 97 (1988)
  • Philcox: 14 (1990)
• Antirrhinum L.
  • Hiern: 205 (1904)
  • Hemsley & Skan: 287 (1906)
  • Mielcarek: 75 (1996)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 3, from Mediterranean to northwest India, also in tropical Africa, Atlantic islands, Haiti, India, and Australia
• Southern Africa: Species 1: *Misopates orontium (L.) Raf., introduced from S Europe and North Africa, occurs sporadically as weed of cultivation in KwaZulu-Natal and Western and Eastern Cape