Source:
SSA
Description:
Annual or perennial herbs; stems erect, ascending, prostrate or decumbent, often rooting at nodes and much branched, sometimes fleshy and/or hollow, glabrous or pubescent. Leaves usually opposite, especially near base, cauline ones sometimes alternate, verticillate or scattered, sessile or petiolate, ovate to lanceolate-oblong, entire or variously dentate or crenate. Flowers in terminal or axillary racemes, rarely axillary and solitary, bracteate, pedicellate; bracts 0. Calyx with very short tube, 4(5)-partite, where present, fifth posterior lobe smaller, accrescent. Corolla barely tubular, usually subrotate, 4(5)-lobed; tube very short, rarely exceeding calyx; limb spreading, lateral lobes exterior in bud. Stamens 2, fertile, arising in corolla tube at sides of upper lobe, exserted; anthers bithecate; thecae divergent or parallel, confluent at apex. Ovary bilocular; ovules few to many; style with subcapitate stigma. Fruit a laterally compressed or turgid, bivalved, loculicidal (sometimes septicidal) capsule, ovoid to reniform or obcordate. Seeds ovoid or orbicular. x = 7, 8, 9, 17 (6, 10, 12, 15) (B-chromosomes, aneuploids, high polyploidy).
Distribution:
Species +/- 180, mostly temperate, mainly north, few on tropical mountains in Africa, some subcosmopolitan weeds; 1 in sthn Afr.: Veronica anagallis-aquatica L., indigenous or introduced from Europe, widespread in wet areas but not Botswana; several others as sporadic escapes or weeds, especially * V. persica Desf.
Classification:
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