Buchnera L.

Annual or perennial herbs, mostly drying black, perhaps parasitic; stems sparingly branched, mostly wiry, slightly compressed or terete, mostly pubescent, often strigose, the hairs often stout based. Leaves narrow, the basal leaves opposite, sometimes small and broad, the cauline leaves often alternate, entire or remotely denticulate, pointed at both ends, (1-)3-5-nerved; petiole mostly obsolete. Inflorescences terminal spikes, the flowers subsessile, subtended by scalelike foliaceous bracts and by 2 ovate, usually ciliate bracts, the outermost usually larger. Flowers with the calyx tubular, sometimes broader above, 5-lobate, the lobes equal or conspicuously unequal, the tube 10-nerved, enervate between or conspicuously nervate between the major nerves, slightly accrescent in fruit; corolla salverform, the tube exserted, glabrous or pubescent outside, the limb with 5 subequal rotund lobes, the throat densely tufted with stout, monili-form hairs, the tube mostly pubescent below and pubescent with simple or few celled hairs below the point of stamen insertion; stamens 4, inserted in the bottom 1/2 of the tube, didynamous, the anthers ovoid or ovate, pointed apically, versatile, situated about 2/3 way up the tube; ovary ovoid, glabrous, the style simple, the stigma a linear extension of the style, perhaps inconspicuously 2-lobed, included. Capsule enveloped by the indurate fruiting calyx, sometimes slightly exserted, splitting loculicidally to the base into 2 elliptical valves, the dissepiment remaining with the valves as broad median ridges, the placenta narrowly cylindrical; seeds numerous, oblong, slightly angled, longitudinally ridged.