Usually perennial (one species a herbaceous annual) with spreading or ascending branched stems, becoming woody with age, sparsely to densely hairy, the leaf-hairs often arising from well-developed mineralized discoid bases. Leaves all cauline, mostly alternate but lowest on a shoot opposite and in one species all opposite, rather thick or somewhat succulent, narrow and elongate, mostly without visible nervation, the margins somewhat involute. Inflorescences few–many-flowered, bracteate, with flowers interspersed among leaves along the outer half of the leafy shoot or aggregated into erect elongating pseudo-racemose clusters terminating the leafy stems and branches, never distinctly scorpioid; pedicels short and stout or obsolete. Calyx-lobes 5, oblong to lanceolate or oblanceolate, equal or very unequal, sometimes united at base into a very short tube. Corolla white, lilac, blue or reddish purple, sometimes pale but becoming blue or purple with age, salver-shaped or funnel-shaped, symmetrical to strongly zygomorphic, outside glabrous to strigulose or pubescent or with minute stipitate glands, hairy at the throat; lobes rounded, obovate, ovate or semicircular, equal or unequal. Stamens 5 with unequal filaments, included or shortly exserted. Style short or extending only to the throat, never exserted, slender, entire or in one species very shortly bilobed at the apex. Nutlets 1–4, grey to reddish, broadly lanceolate, ovate or cordate in dorsal outline, dorsally not or imperfectly ridged, ventrally obtuse or with median keel.
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