Genlisea A.St.-hil.

Rootless perennial or annual herbs of wet places. Stem short, subterranean, erect or decumbent. Leaves dimorphic, persistent at anthesis; foliage leaves petioled, entire, linear-lanceolate to spathulate or orbicular, glabrous or rarely hairy, densely or laxly rosulate from the upper part of the stem; pitcher leaves (traps) ± densely congested on the lower part of the stem and descending into the substrate and consisting of a stalk and a slender tube, cylindrical from an ellipsoid base and terminating in 2 ribbon-like helically twisted arms, the arms and tube provided internally with transverse rows of stiff inwardly directed hairs. Inflorescence terminal and arising from the leaf-rosette, racemose, bracteate; scape simple or branched above, erect, usually glandular or hispid, rarely completely glabrous, provided with ± numerous sterile bracts (scales); raceme congested to ± elongated, few– many-flowered; pedicels usually considerably longer than the bracts, erect at anthesis, erect, spreading or strongly recurved in fruit, glandular, hispid or ± glabrous. Bracts basifixed; bracteoles 2, inserted with the bract at the base of the pedicel. Calyx-lobes 5, subequal, slightly accrescent, densely glandular to hispid or glabrous. Corolla bilabiate, glandular, hispid or glabrous, blue, violet, mauve, yellow or white; upper lip ± erect, entire or 2-lobed; lower lip larger, spurred at the base; palate raised and ± gibbous, limb spreading or deflexed, ± deeply 3-lobed; spur acute or obtuse, shorter than to longer than the lower lip. Stamens 2, inserted at the base of the corolla; filaments falcate; anthers dorsifixed, ellipsoid, the thecae ± confluent. Ovary globose, glandular, hispid or glabrous; style short, indistinct; stigma bilabiate; lower lip about as broad as the ovary, semiorbicular; upper lip ± obsolete; ovules numerous, sessile on a fleshy free basal placenta, anatropous. Capsule globose, uniquely multiple-circumscissile, the lowermost line of dehiscence approximately equatorial and with 2 others between it and the persistent style. Seeds exalbuminous, numerous, ovoid, reticulate, with a prominent hilum at one end.