Description:

• Annual or perennial herbs or shrublets; hairs, other than in corolla tube, thin-walled
• Leaves alternate or lower ones opposite, mostly linear to ± lanceolate or oblong, seldom ovate, sessile, entire or ± dentate
• Flowers sessile, bracteate, in terminal, often dense spikes
• Bracts free from and exceeding calyx, mainly ovate but apex often acuminate, long-lanceolate or linear; often pubescent
• Calyx bipartite; segments lateral, linear or lanceolate-oblong, entire, sometimes with membranous margins, sometimes ciliate
• Corolla tubular, very irregular, unilabiate, 4-lobed; tube slender, cylindrical, sometimes glandular within, split in front to or below middle, dilated behind and expanded into a flat or concave, 4-lobed limb, bearded or glabrous but without orange patch; lobes subequal or middle pair longer, posterior lobes exterior in bud
• Stamens 4, didynamous, arising at 2 levels ± on margins of fissure below corolla lobes or lower pair deeper in tube; filaments linear or terete; anthers bithecate, oblong or linear, sometimes longer than filaments
• Nectary often present laterally at base of ovary
• Ovary bilocular, elliptical; ovules 1 per locule, pendulous; style terete, included or exserted
• Fruit oblong, ovate, or subterete, rarely spontaneously breaking into 2 hard-walled cocci
• Seeds fusiform

Nomenclature:

• Dischisma Choisy
  • Choisy: 93 (1823)
  • Rolfe: 111 (1901)
  • Merxmüller & Roessler: 2 (1967)
  • Roessler: 90, t. 48 (1979)
  • Hilliard: 315 (1990)
  • Hilliard: 1 (1999)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 11, Namibia and coastal districts of Western and Eastern Cape to near Port Elizabeth