Description:

• Annual or perennial herbs; stems creeping, prostrate or decumbent, rarely erect, much branched; roots fibrous or sometimes fleshy
• Leaves opposite or upper ones alternate, usually broadly ovate or obovate to rotund, petiolate, toothed to subentire or repand
• Flowers solitary, axillary, pedicellate, ebracteolate
• Calyx 5-partite, usually glandular, hairy; segments scarcely imbricate, somewhat accrescent in fruit
• Corolla tubular, bilabiate, 5-lobed; tube short with basal, dependent spur; posterior lip exterior in bud, 2-lobed; anterior lip 3-lobed
• Stamens 4, didynamous; arising low in corolla tube; anterior pair longer than posterior pair and with filaments bent at base, passing round posterior pair and coming to be in posterior position; filaments linear, glandular, hairy; anthers all connate or connate in pairs about the stigma; unithecate by confluence; staminodes 0
• Ovary bilocular, elliptic, glandular-hairy; ovules many; style linear, slightly longer than ovary; stigma shortly bilobed or apparently capitate
• Fruit a subglobose, loculicidal capsule, clearly or obscurely emarginate; valves furrowed down middle and at length bipartite
• Seeds many, subglobose; testa brown, membranous and reticulate

Nomenclature:

• Diclis Benth.
  • Bentham: 23 (1836)
  • Hiern: 200 (1904)
  • Merxmüller & Roessler: 23 (1967)
  • Hilliard & Burtt: 311 (1979)
  • Philcox: 12 (1990)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 10, Africa and Madagascar
• Southern Africa: Species ± 4, widespread but not in Western Cape