Sutera

Shrublets, suffrutices or perennial herbs, rarely annual, mostly glandular, sometimes aromatic or foetid; stems leafy throughout. Leaves usually opposite, sometimes alternate upwards, variously shaped, bases either +/- connate or decurrent in narrow wings or ridges, entire to toothed, rarely more deeply lobed. Flowers mostly solitary in axils of leaves or bracts, in +/- racemose inflorescences, sometimes in cymules or cymose racemes, sometimes panicled. Bracts at most adnate to extreme base of pedicel. Calyx bilabiate, sometimes obscurely so; posterior lip 3-lobed, anterior lip 2-lobed, or rarely regularly divided into 6-9 lobes; lobes +/- linear-lanceolate, usually pubescent. Corolla tubular, nearly regular, 5-lobed; tube usually funnel-shaped, rarely cylindrical, mouth round; lobes spreading, suborbicular to oblong, entire, usually glandular-pubescent outside, often with glistening glands as well, inside usually with 1-5 longitudinal bands of clavate hairs in throat, or glabrous, rarely with clavate hairs extending from throat out on to lower part of lobes; posterior lobes exterior in bud. Stamens 4(5), didynamous; filaments usually arising in upper part of corolla tube, not decurrent, in 2 species arising in lower part of tube and then all included; posterior pair either included or exserted, anterior pair exserted; anthers synthecate, dorsifixed. Nectary semi-annular. Ovary bilocular, +/- elliptical, often with glistening glands at least on sutures, rarely glandular-pubescent as well; ovules many per locule; style filiform; stigma usually lingulate with 2 marginal bands of stigmatic papillae (rarely short and minutely bifid), exserted, in 2 species shortly bifid (not papillose), deeply included. Fruit a septicidal capsule with a short loculicidal split at tip of each valve, glabrous or with glistening glands. Seeds roughly elliptical, sometimes angled by pressure, amber-coloured, pallid or grey- to violet-blue; testa thin, tightly investing alveolate endosperm, with several longitudinal rows of transversely elongated pits in a chequer-board pattern.