Description:

• Perennial, heath-like shrublets; branches slender; many axillary brachyblasts present; hairs on stems, leaves, bracts and calyx with sculptured walls
• Leaves alternate, linear, ± fascicled
• Flowers bracteate, sessile, in compact spikes with lower flowers longer than upper, resulting in corymb-like spike; elongate in fruit
• Bracts free from calyx, ovate-lanceolate, villous, much shorter than corolla tube
• Calyx tubular, 5-lobed, bilabiate, villous, shorter than bracts; tube shallowly campanulate; lobes at least equal to tube in length, 2 posterior ones incompletely divided
• Corolla tubular, 5-lobed, leathery; tube long, cylindrical, widening slightly towards apex; limb much shorter; posterior lip 2-lobed, without orange patch, exterior in bud; anterior lip 3-lobed; lobes subequal, spreading, obovate-oblong
• Stamens usually 4, rarely 2 (posterior), if 4, didynamous; posterior pair arising high in corolla tube, with filaments adnate to tube for most of their length, free part shorter than included anthers; anterior pair with longer filaments but smaller anthers, arising in mouth of tube, exserted; if 2 stamens either anterior filaments with sterile anthers or these stamens completely aborted; filaments linear; anthers synthecate, dorsifixed; staminodes 0(2)
• Nectary single, basal on posterior side of ovary
• Ovary bilocular, ellipsoid to elongate; ovules 1 per locule; or sometimes ovary unilocular with anterior locule absent or ovule aborted; style slender, terete, exserted; stigma linear, flat
• Fruit of 1 or 2 hard-walled cocci, enclosed in persistent calyx, convex on one side, curved, bluntly beaked
• Seeds fusiform with fleshy testa

Nomenclature:

• Gosela Choisy
  • Choisy: 22 (1848)
  • Rolfe: 177 (1901)
  • Hartley & Balkwill: 471 (1990)
  • Hilliard: 318 (1990)
  • Hilliard: 1 (1999)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Monotypic: Gosela eckloniana Choisy, Western Cape: Clanwilliam, Ceres and Piquetberg Districts