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Aromatic, gynodioecious or ☿, annual or perennial herbs or small shrubs, not rhizomatous. Lvs simple, entire or shallowly toothed. Verticels 2-several-flowered, aggregated in short axillary or terminal heads or spikes, and these densely arranged in paniculate or corymbose infls. Bracts distinct in appearance from lvs and often conspicuously coloured, usually imbricate. Calyx campanulate or turbinate, (10)-13-nerved, not gibbous at base, either ± actinomorphic with teeth ± equal, or 2-lipped or 1-lipped with a deep slit on one side. Corolla 2-lipped, hairy or glabrous outside; upper lip entire or emarginate; lower lip 3-lobed. Stamens 4, usually exserted, spreading, straight, ascending under upper lip; filaments ± unequal; anther cells divergent. Style gynobasic, its branches equal. Nutlets ellipsoid or ovoid.
Cal regular, about 13-nerved, very villous in the throat, the lobes ovate-triangular; cor-tube scarcely widened distally, the upper lip straight, flat or nearly so, 2-lobed, the lower lip somewhat longer, deflexed, deeply 3-lobed; stamens 4, the lower pair well exsert, divergent from each other, the upper pair shorter, about equaling the upper lip; nutlets ovoid, smooth; perennial herbs with large, repeatedly trichotomous terminal infl, each node and each fl subtended by a subsessile oval bract, the upper bracts progressively smaller. 15, Eur. and Medit. reg. to c. Asia.
