Lindernia All.

Small paludal herbs, copiously branching, erect or ascending, sometimes rooting at the nodes, the roots fibrous, the stems mostly slender, drying angled, glabrate. Leaves opposite, small, entire or denticulate, sometimes punctate, 1-3-veined from near the base, basally cordate or truncate and clasping, or petiolate. Inflorescences of 1(-3?) flowers in the leaf axils, the pedicels slender, drying angled, shorter or longer than the leaves, ebracteate. Flowers with the calyx 5-lobed, the lobes short or free to the base, costate and 1-3(-5) veined, the corolla prominently exserted from the calyx but sometimes cleistogamous and then the corolla little or not exceeding the calyx, campanulate, 2-lipped, the upper lip emarginate, the lower lip 3-denticulate, blue, white or purplish; stamens 4 or 2, the filaments inserted high on the corolla tube, the anthers connate in pairs, the thecae narrow, widely divergent and forming a cross, the filament sometimes conspicuously expanded just below the anther; ovary glabrous, eglan-dular, the style exserted or not, the stigmas compressed, ovate or discoid. Capsule elliptical or ovoid, sometimes slightly oblique, sometimes globose, dehiscing septicidally to the base, the placenta narrow, winged by the light colored septum; seeds numerous, mostly oblong, rarely curved, reticulate in transverse or longi-tudinal lines, these lines sometimes assuming the magnitude of small wings.