Ceratotheca

Annual or short-lived perennial herbs, rarely small shrubs; stems erect or sometimes procumbent, branched, sometimes woody; stems and leaves +/- densely covered with mucilage glands and hairs. Leaves opposite, petiolate; lamina very variable, circular, ovate, cordate, reniform or lanceolate, hastate or 3-lobed, often polymorphic; margins +/- entire, crenate or serrate; upper and lower leaves often much smaller and simpler. Flowers solitary, axillary, on short pedicels, pendent; white, pink or lilac, throat usually less intensely coloured. Calyx much shorter than corolla tube, suboblique, glandular-pilose. Corolla glandular-pilose; tube curved and slightly gibbous on adaxial side at base, funnel-shaped; limb sub-bilabiate, oblique, most lobes short and subequal, ovate, anterior lobe larger, often yellow, with dark stripes or lines of dark spots running down into the throat. Stamens subdidynamous, included; filaments linear; anthers oblong-linear, thecae parallel; staminodes 0. Nectary annular. Ovary equally 2-locular, falsely 4-locular because of a false septum almost to apex; oblong, with 2 divergent horns at apex, glandular-villous; ovules many in 1 series per compartment; style subterete; stigma of 2 lanceolate lobes. Fruit a capsule compressed at right angles to septum, obtuse or truncate at apex with 2 lateral horns. Seeds many, compressed, obovate, with shallow groove round edges and testa usually black when ripe. x = 8 (1 report, polyploidy).