Description:

• Annual or perennial herbs, some aquatic; stems erect to procumbent, simple or branched, quadrangular
• Leaves opposite, decussate, sometimes in basal rosette, rarely grouped at apex, sessile or petiolate, variously shaped from ovate to linear, entire or somewhat crenate to dentate, rarely floating; venation usually palmate
• Flowers solitary, axillary, or in terminal racemes, pedicellate or sometimes subsessile; pedicels accrescent, sometimes deflexed in fruit
• Calyx tubular, 5-lobed; tube ± turbinate at base, somewhat 5-ribbed or -winged; lobes shallow or extending almost to base
• Corolla tubular, bilabiate; tube cylindrical or somewhat campanulate above; upper lip erect, broad, concave, entire or emarginate to deeply bifid, exterior in bud; lower lip larger, spreading, with 3 broad, subequal, rounded lobes
• Stamens usually 2 (upper) + 2 staminodes (lower), rarely 4 fertile, didynamous; upper pair arising at top of corolla tube, included in upper lip, with filaments short, straight to arched, linear; lower pair arising ± in corolla throat, with filaments usually longer, recurved or geniculate ± at base, usually with large appendage or swelling there, rarely without, then curving inwards above, sometimes truncate ± at top of appendage; anthers bithecate, free or contiguous; thecae divaricate and often confluent at apex; staminodes 0
• Nectary disc-like at base of ovary
• Ovary bilocular, ovoid, oblong or subfusiform; ovules many; style filiform, slightly widening above; stigma shortly bilamellate, lobes stigmatic within, touch-sensitive
• Fruit an ovoid to long-ellipsoid, septicidal capsule
• Seeds many, ovoid, elliptical or cylindrical; testa with thin-walled epidermis cells; endosperm alveolate or sometimes smooth and somewhat furrowed or ridged
• x = 9 (7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15) (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Lindernia All.
  • Allioni: 178, t. 5, fig. 1 (1766)
  • Merxmüller & Roessler: 28 (1967)
  • Philcox: 61 (1990)
  • Fischer: 439 (1989)
  • Fischer: 214 (1992)
  • Fischer: 227 (1995)
  • Seine et al.: 7 (1995)
• Vandellia L.
  • Linnaeus: 12 (1767)
• Bonnaya Link & Otto
  • Link & Ottot: t. 11 (1821)
• Ilysanthes Raf.
  • Rafinesque: 13 (1820)
  • Hiern: 364 (1904)
• Tittmannia Rchb.
  • Reichenbach: 27, t. 38 (1824)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 80, tropical to warm temperate, Europe, mainly Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 7, all areas except Northern Cape, but mainly eastern half of country; damp areas: swamps, rivers, pans and ephemeral rock pool edges, or aquatic in such pools