Source:
SSA
Synonym(s):
Micromeria Benth.: t. 1282 (1829); Bentham: 368 (1834); Bentham: 212 (1848); Bentham: 1188 (1876); Baker: 452 (1900); Cooke: 306 (1910).
Description:
Perennial herbs or soft shrubs. Leaves small, entire or obscurely toothed. Flowers solitary or in few- to several-flowered cymes in axils of undifferentiated leaves along upper half of stems (or sometimes lower). Calyx tubular or tubular-campanulate, 13-15-nerved, subequally 5-toothed, scarcely enlarging in fruiting stage. Corolla scarcely or well exserted from calyx, dimorphic in some species; tube straight, cylindric below, campanulate above; upper lip short, broad, emarginate; lower lip longer, 3-lobed, middle lobe the largest. Stamens 4, didynamous, included, arising near throat, curved upwards, two lower the longer. Style included, 2-lobed. Nutlets ovoid to oblong, smooth. x = 15 (9, 11, 12) (aneuploids, polyploidy, B-chromosomes).
Distribution:
Species +/- 30, cosmopolitan; 4 in sthn Afr.: Northern Province, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho and Eastern Cape.
Classification:
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