Source:
SSA
Description:
Annual or perennial herbs. Leaves usually verticillate below, alternate above, narrow, sessile, entire. Flowers in terminal, bracteate racemes or spikes, rarely solitary in leaf axils. Calyx deeply 5-lobed, equal or unequal, posterior lobe usually longest, very rarely shortest. Corolla tubular, bilabiate, 5-lobed, usually glabrous except for palate; tube +/- cylindrical, with conical or cylindrical spur on anterior side at base; lips +/- equal, posterior lip 2-lobed, +/- patent, exterior in bud; anterior lip 3-lobed, spreading to patent with prominent, pubescent basal palate occluding corolla mouth, or only partly so. Stamens 4, didynamous, included, adjacent pairs of anthers marginally coherent; filaments filiform; anthers bithecate; thecae oblong, parallel; staminode minute. Ovary equally or unequally bilocular; ovules many; style simple or bifid; stigma various. Fruit an oblong, ovoid or globose capsule, walls papery, septum erect, straight; locules dehiscing by several irregular, meridional fissures from apex towards base. Seeds oblong-orbicular to suborbicular, winged, tuberculate. x = 6 (7, 9, 13) (B-chromosomes-1 report, polyploidy).
Distribution:
Species +/- 150, temperate Europe, Asia (not SE) and North Africa; widely naturalised in temperate regions; 1 in sthn Afr.: *Linaria vulgaris Mill., scattered as a weed mainly in eastern half (Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Western and Eastern Cape); others occur as sporadic garden escapes.
Classification:
Add new comment