Description:

• Twiggy shrublets; stems leafy, pubescence confined to two narrow ridges spanning internodes, hairs ± retrorse, eglandular, but sometimes minute, patent, glandular
• Leaves (and bracts) usually opposite and decussate, rarely subopposite, elliptical, gradually narrowed below into very short petiolar part, bases connate and decurrent in two narrow ridges, finely callose-toothed, thick, glandular-punctate and partly puberulous
• Flowers solitary in upper leaf axils, forming terminal, racemose, round heads, oblong in fruit, sometimes further arranged in corymbose panicles
• Bracts adnate to pedicel and halfway up calyx tube
• Calyx bilabiate, 5-lobed, membranous; lobes unequal, ciliate
• Corolla bilabiate, thick-textured, not persistent; tube cylindrical below, abruptly campanulate above, glabrous outside, inside heavily bearded round mouth with unicellular clavate hairs; posterior lip 2-lobed with orange patch at base extending down inflated part of tube, exterior in bud; anterior lip 3-lobed; lobes entire, rotund
• Stamens 4, didynamous; filaments short, arising in throat, not decurrent down tube; posterior pair lying in throat; anterior pair exceeding posterior pair, shortly exserted; anthers dorsifixed, synthecate; staminodes 0
• Nectary at base of ovary, on shorter side
• Ovary bilocular, elliptical; ovules ± 9-16 per locule; style long, filiform, passing gradually into lingulate stigma with two marginal bands of stigmatic papillae, exserted
• Fruit a septicidal capsule with a short loculicidal split at tip of each valve
• Seeds obscurely 3-angled or flattened, irregularly wrinkled on one face; testa tightly investing endosperm, opaque, creamy or pale amber

Nomenclature:

• Glekia Hilliard
  • Hilliard: 481 (1989)
  • Hilliard: 416 (1994)
• Phyllopodium Benth. in part
  • Hiern: 321 (1904)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Monotypic: Glekia krebsiana (Benth.) Hilliard, Lesotho and Eastern Cape mountains from Lady Grey and Queenstown to Somerset East and Graaff-Reinet