Trieenea

Perennial herbs or shrublets, or sometimes annual, base sometimes woody, usually eventually bushy though often flowering as seedlings; stems erect or decumbent, sometimes sprawling or diffuse, usually branched from base, rarely simple, leafy; pubescence always patent, hairs gland-tipped or not. Leaves opposite or sometimes alternate above, usually elliptical to ovate, sometimes broadly ovate or rhomboid, margins deeply and coarsely toothed. Flowers in racemes, capitate or elongate, often panicled, always erect. Bracts longer than broad, often leaf-like, usually adnate to pedicel only, or sometimes to extreme base of calyx in uppermost flowers. Calyx obscurely bilabiate, lobed almost or quite to base, membranous. Corolla tubular, bilabiate, 5-lobed, membranous; tube cylindrical and widening rapidly, rarely slightly above, sometimes funnel-shaped, often glandular-pubescent outside; posterior lip 2-lobed, exterior in bud; anterior lip 3-lobed; lobes entire; orange/yellow patch at base of posterior lip extending down back of tube almost to base and there either glabrous or bearded with unicellular clavate hairs. Stamens 4, either all exserted or the posterior pair included or appearing in mouth of tube; posterior filaments very briefly to strongly decurrent down corolla tube; anthers synthecate, dorsifixed; staminodes 0. Nectary small, on shorter side of ovary base. Ovary bilocular, elliptical, base slightly oblique, either glandular-puberulous or glabrous on upper part; ovules up to 14 per locule; style filiform, passing gradually into flattened, lingulate stigma with 2 marginal bands of stigmatic papillae, well exserted. Fruit a septicidal capsule with a short, loculicidal split at top of each valve. Seeds elliptical or slightly angled, mostly pallid amber or cream, rarely greenish or bluish grey, sinuously wrinkled in longitudinal bands; testa tightly investing endosperm. x = 6, 7 (1 report each).