Description:

• Perennial herbs
• Leaves opposite or ternate, serrate
• Inflorescences terminal, spike-like; flowers in dense, opposite, many-flowered, cymose clusters subtended by relatively large bracts, lower bracts leaf-like, often blotched with white or mauve
• Calyx sub-bilabiate; tube at first campanulate, elongating and becoming tubular; upper lip of 3 subequal teeth; lower lip smaller, emarginate
• Corolla small, bilabiate; tube campanulate; upper lip short, broad, subequally 4-lobed; lower lip narrow, oblong, concave
• Stamens 4, didynamous, declinate, exserted; filaments pubescent in lower half, upper pair arising below middle of tube, lower pair arising near throat; anthers 1-thecous
• Disc saucer-shaped, slightly produced in front
• Style filiform, exserted, 2-lobed
• Nutlets ellipsoid, compressed, brown
• x = 9 (7 - 1 report) (polyploidy - 1 report)

Nomenclature:

• Geniosporum Wall. ex Benth.
  • Bentham: t. 1300 (1830)
  • Bentham: 19 (1832)
  • Bentham: 44 (1848)
  • Briquet: 367 (1897)
  • Baker: 350 (1900)
  • Brown: 293 (1910)
  • Codd: 215 (1985)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 25, in tropical Africa, Madagascar and southeast Asia
• Southern Africa: 1 species is found from Magoebaskloof (Northern Province) along the eastern escarpment to Barberton and westward to Witbank (Mpumalanga) and Pretoria Districts (Gauteng), extending into Swaziland