Description:

• Perennial or biennial herbs, slightly branched, variably hairy
• Leaves alternate; basal ones often long-petiolate, usually elliptic, cauline ones sessile, elliptic or lanceolate
• Flowers in terminal or axillary, scorpioid cymes; cymes lengthen considerably in fruit, ebracteate; pedicellate or subsessile, bisexual
• Calyx with a shallow tube; deeply 5-lobed, lobes ovate, elliptic or oblong, spreading or reflexed; not or slightly accrescent
• Corolla white or blue; tube short, cylindrical or funnel-shaped, with 5 crescent-shaped scales (fornices) in throat; lobes 5, spreading, ovate to broadly ovate, apices usually obtuse
• Stamens included, arising at base of tube or just below scales, alternating with them; filaments very short; anthers ovate, elliptic to oblong, obtuse
• Ovary 4-lobed, adhering to central stylar column only by part of internal face of each lobe; gynobase conical; style gynobasic, terete; stigma capitate
• Fruit of 4 nutlets; nutlets depressed ovoid, densely covered with glochidia or smooth in part, glochidia often joined together to form a definite margin
• x = 6 (high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Cynoglossum L.
  • Linnaeus: 134 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 65 (1754)
  • Candolle: 146 (1846)
  • Bentham: 848 (1876)
  • Boissier: 263 (1879)
  • Gürke: 98 (1897)
  • Wright: 13 (1904)
  • Brand: 114 (1921)
  • Taton: 50 (1971)
  • Martins: 102 (1990)
  • Al-Shehbaz: 112 (1991)
  • Nowicke & Miller: 25 (1991)
  • Verdcourt: 102 (1991)
  • Riedl: 79 (1997)
• Paracynoglossum Popov
  • Popov: 717 (1953)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 75, cosmopolitan in temperate and subtropical regions
• Southern Africa: Species 8, widespread, but absent from Namibia and Botswana