Selago

Shrublets, suffrutices, perennial or rarely annual herbs; stems erect, decumbent or prostrate; hairs on stems, leaves, bracts and calyx with sculptured walls. Leaves usually alternate, sometimes opposite near base, and alternate upwards, rarely opposite throughout, often fascicled, small, narrow, oblong, elliptical or spathulate, entire or sometimes toothed. Flowers sessile, subsessile, or shortly pedicellate, bracteate, in a spike or raceme, congested or elongated, solitary or aggregated into corymbs or elongate panicles, often elongating in fruit. Bracts usually adnate to pedicel and calyx tube, sometimes free. Calyx tubular, +/- regular to irregular, shortly to deeply (2)3-5-lobed; tube broad or narrow; posterior lobe often narrower and/or shorter than others, or lobes sometimes subequal. Corolla tubular, usually bilabiate and 5-lobed, rarely 4-lobed and then rotate, without yellow/orange patch; tube often funnel-shaped, sometimes cylindrical, usually glabrous, sometimes pubescent; limb always glabrous inside; posterior lip 2- or 1-lobed, exterior in bud, glabrous; anterior lip 3-lobed; lobes oblong or obovate. Stamens usually 4 (2 in 1 species or sometimes 0), didynamous, arising at various depths within corolla tube; filaments subterete or linear, posterior ones decurrent down tube (except in 1 species); anthers synthecate, dorsifixed; posterior ones in throat, mouth, or exserted; anterior ones usually at least shortly exserted (all anthers deeply included in 1 species); staminodes 0-4 (reduction of stamens to staminodes is fairly common, especially in very small flowers, forming functionally female flowers). Nectary adnate on posterior side of ovary base. Ovary usually bilocular (occasionally unilocular in one species), subglobose or ovoid; ovules 1 per locule, pendulous; style filiform, merging into lingulate stigma with 2 marginal bands of stigmatic papillae. Fruit a pair of +/- equal, ovate or oblong, hard-walled, indehiscent cocci (rarely with 1 coccus aborted), sometimes held within accrescent calyx, often separating at maturity, rarely held together by common pericarp or fused; cocci convex on outer face, plane on other; pericarp smooth or rugulose. Seeds usually cylindrical, sometimes with spurious cells which coalesce, at times, to form cavities. x = 7 (1 report).