Plants perennial herbs or subshrubs. Leaves mostly linear to oblong, margin entire, involute, or flat. Verticillasters 2-to many flowered, mostly secund, axillary, often in long terminal spikes, lower ones lax, upper crowded; floral leaves similar to stem leaves, reduced; bracts and bracteoles minute. Pedicel distinct. Calyx tubular to subcampanulate, brightly colored, conspicuously 15-veined, hairy, glandular, teeth 5, equal, sinuses with a thickening at junction of 2 side veins. Corolla blue, purple, or occasionally white, hairy outside, glandular, glabrous inside, tube nearly included or conspicuously exserted, limb 2-lipped; upper lip emarginate or 2-lobed, sometimes subentire; lower lip spreading, 3-lobed; middle lobe longer than lateral lobes, truncate to emarginate. Stamens 4, mostly exserted, anterior 2 longer; filaments glabrous; anthers ovoid, cells 2, divaricate. Style apex equally 2-cleft. Nutlets oblong to oblong-ovoid, hairy, glandular, or glabrous.
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Cal 15-nerved, regular, not hairy in the throat, the lobes triangular, cuspidate; cor strongly 2-lipped, the upper lip small, obovate, shallowly 2-lobed, the lower lip much larger, its lateral lobes bent upward, the terminal lobe broadly dilated; stamens 4, straight, somewhat divergent, exsert, the lower pair slightly the longer; nutlets ovoid, smooth. 15, s. Eur. and Medit. reg. to c. Asia.
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