Description:

• Small annual herbs; stems erect, decumbent or ascending; brachyblasts 0; hairs on stems, leaves, bracts and calyx thin-walled
• Leaves opposite, bases often connate, sometimes becoming alternate upwards, variously shaped, sometimes tapering into petiole
• Flowers sessile, in a narrow spike, or several forming a panicle
• Bract adnate to part of calyx tube
• Calyx 5-lobed or 5-toothed, campanulate; anterior lip sometimes only very shallowly divided
• Corolla tubular, uni- or bilabiate, 4- or 5-lobed; tube cylindrical or funnel-shaped; posterior lip 4-lobed, sometimes bearded with minute clavate hairs, without yellow/orange patch, exterior in bud; anterior lip 1-lobed, minute, or lobe wanting
• Stamens 4, didynamous, sometimes 2 being somewhat abnormal, or 2 only (anterior pair); filaments arising in upper part of corolla tube or in mouth, shortly decurrent on tube; anthers synthecate, dorsifixed, ± exserted
• Nectary annular but more strongly developed on one side
• Ovary bilocular, elliptic-oblong, base oblique; ovule 1 per locule, pendulous; style filiform; stigma lingulate with 2 marginal bands of stigmatic papillae, malformed when flowers autogamous
• Fruit a pair of hard-walled cocci, convex on outer face with median longitudinal groove, rugose on either side of groove, ± plane on inner face, indehiscent
• Seeds ± fusiform, smooth or transversely rugose

Nomenclature:

• Chenopodiopsis Hilliard
  • Hilliard: 315 (1990)
  • Hilliard: 1 (1999)
• Selago L. in part
  • Rolfe: 162 (1901)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 3, confined to Northern Cape (Namaqualand) and Western Cape