Virectaria

Annual or perennial herbs or subshrubs with erect or procumbent, glabrescent to stiffly hairy stems from a fibrous rootstock. Leaves paired; stipules small, deltoid, entire to fimbriated. Inflorescences few- to many-flowered cymose clusters at apices of main shoots. Flowers bisexual, small, never dimorphic. Calyx: tube ovoid or urceolate, often bristly hairy; lobes 5 or 6, equal or unequal, spathulate, filiform or lanceolate. Corolla: tube narrowly cylindric to funnel-shaped; lobes 4-6(7), deltoid to lanceolate, suberect. Disc cylindric, or consisting of 2 separate cones. Stamens 4-6, far exserted on slender filaments; anthers narrowly oblong, +/- medifixed. Ovary 2-locular; ovules many, on placentas on central partition. Fruit a characteristic globose capsule splitting in a plane at right angles to the central partition into 2 valves of which 1 usually remains attached to the rachis. Seeds small, subglobose, reticulately pitted, brownish.