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Strongly scented aromatic herbs or undershrubs. Stems often much-branched. Leaves opposite, petioled. Flowers small; verticillasters 6-10-flowered, forming racemose, simple or branched inflorescences. Pedicels recurved under the calyx. Bracts minute, caducous. Calyx ovoid or campanulate (in fruit deflexed), 10-nerved, 2-lipped; upper lip large, broad, flat (in fruit strongly reflexed), often decurrent on the tube; lower lip usually with 4 narrow, pointed teeth. Corolla campanulate, not annulate within, 2-lipped; upper lip truncate, subequally 4-fid; lower lip longer, declinate, flat, entire. Stamens 4, declinate, in 2 pairs, exserted; filaments free (in Mal.) or the lower pair connate below, naked or the upper pair toothed or hairy below; anther-cells confluent. Disk entire or 2-4-lobed, equal-sided. Style 2-fid; branches subulate or flattened. Nutlets smooth or subrugose, in some species the pericarp swelling and becoming mucilaginous when moistened.
Herbs, annual or perennial, or small shrubs, the stems glabrous or pubescent. Leaves opposite, simple, pinnately-nerved, mostly petiolate. Inflorescences verti-cils, ca 6-flowered or sometimes 10-flowered, appearing overall as a spike or a raceme, the bracts leaf-like. Flowers mostly pedicellate; bracteoles not apparent; calyx ? campanulate, frequently deflexed in fruit, bilabiate, the upper lip + entire, rounded, the margins decurrent partially or completely to the base of the calyx tube, the lower lip 4-toothed, the teeth aristate and unequal; corolla tubular, enclosed or exserted, bilabiate, the upper lip 4-lobed, the lower entire and flat or concave; stamens 4, paired, equal to the corolla tube or exserted, the filaments distinct, the upper pair naked, the lower pair glabrous or pubescent, with or
Cal very irregular, the 2 lowest lobes resembling the lateral but narrower, triangular, the uppermost lobe broad, rounded, its margins decurrent along the cal-tube, and the whole forming a round, nearly flat cap on the upper side of the cal; cal enlarged in fr; cor 2-lipped, the lower lip deflexed, entire, the upper lip 4-lobed; stamens 4, deflexed along the lower cor-lip; herbs or shrubs with small fls in verticils of 6, subtended by bracteal lvs, forming a slender, terminal, spike-like infl. 150, warm reg.
without an appendage at the base, the anthers with 2 functional thecae; ovary 4-lobed, the gynobase lobed or unlobed, the lobes sometimes as high as the nutlets at anthesis, the style slender, bifid near the tip, the branches equal or unequal. Nutlets ca 4, attached at the base, ? spherical, the pericarp smooth or warty.
