Description:

• Annual or perennial herbs, rarely dwarf shrubs; usually hispidulous-strigillose; roots often purplish red
• Leaves sessile or somewhat amplexicaul at base; lanceolate, linear-oblong, narrowly elliptic or oblanceolate
• Flowers in terminal, scorpioid, bracteate cymes
• Calyx divided almost to base into 5 narrow lobes, somewhat accrescent in fruit
• Corolla white, blue or purple; tube infundibuliform or hypocrateriform; throat with 5 well-differentiated, longitudinal bands of hair and/or glands extending from base of corolla lobes downward to between tips of anthers; lobes 5, imbricate, rounded or truncate; annulus near base of corolla tube consisting of scale-like lobes or a narrow collar
• Stamens included; filaments equal, shorter than anthers, arising below middle of tube; anthers oblong with a short apical appendage
• Ovary 4-lobed, 4-locular; gynobase disc-like; style gynobasic, included, ± the same height as anthers; stigmas 2, subterminal
• Fruit of 4 nutlets; nutlets erect to strongly divergent, ovoid to subpyriform, with a ± incurved or almost straight beak, rugose, tuberculate or smooth; attachment scar basal or nearly so, conspicuous
• x = 7 (8) (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Buglossoides Moench
  • Moench: 418 (1794)
  • Fernandes: 87 (1972)
  • Al-Shehbaz: 129 (1991)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 15, in Europe and Asia
• Southern Africa: *Buglossoides arvensis (L.) I.M.Johnst., naturalised in parts, North-West, Gauteng, Free State, Lesotho, Northern and Eastern Cape