Description:

• Perennial herbs, woody at base
• Leaves digitately 3(-5)-foliolate, thin-textured, toothed
• Inflorescences dense, of many crowded verticils, lowest verticil often a distance below the rest; verticils densely many-flowered, made up of opposite, much-branched cymes, lower cymes pedunculate; bracts narrow, simple or 3-foliolate; bracteoles linear-filiform
• Calyx tubular-campanulate, 13-15-nerved, equally 5-toothed; teeth narrowly lanceolate-deltoid, subulate, erect
• Corolla tube exserted, somewhat widened at throat, glabrous within; upper lip erect, somewhat hooded, 2-fid or emarginate, ± equal in length to the lower; lower lip spreading, 3-fid with median lobe the largest
• Stamens 4, didynamous, ascending under upper lip or slightly exserted, upper pair longer than lower; anthers 2-thecous; thecae parallel, distinct
• Style shortly 2-fid; lobes equal
• Nutlets ovoid, smooth
• x = 10 (1 report)

Nomenclature:

• *Cedronella Moench
  • Moench: 411 (1794)
  • Bentham: 405 (1848)
  • Bentham: 1200 (1876)
  • Briquet: 235 (1896)
  • Skan: 333 (1910)
  • Codd: 27 (1985)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 1[: Cedronella canariensis (L.) Webb & Berthel], originally from Madeira and the Canary Islands, now a widespread weed
• Southern Africa: Western Cape, naturalised