Phyla Lour.

Perennial mostly procumbent or creeping herbs, stems trailing or ascending, sometimes slightly woody basally, more or less incanous throughout with ap-pressed-strigose, rarely subglabrous malpighian (medifixed) trichomes. Leaves decussate-opposite, often fleshy, flat or pinnately plicatulate. Inflorescences spicate, axillary, cylindric, densely many-flowered, usually greatly elongate in fruit, solitary, paired, or ternate, never aggregated into corymbs or panicles. Flotvers small, sessile, borne singly in the axils of small cuneate-obovate or flabel-liform bractlets, not at all 4-ranked; calyx small, membranous, ovoid-campanulate or compressed and 2-carinate or winged, the rim 2-or 4-fid or 4-dentate; corolla irregular, the tube straight or incurved, slender, slightly exserted from the calyx, equal in diameter throughout or slightly ampliate above, the limb oblique, spread-ing, somewhat 2-lipped, 4-parted, the lobes broad, often retuse apically, the posterior entire, emarginate, or bifid to about the middle, the laterals exterior, the anterior often larger; stamens 4, didynamous, included or slightly exserted, the anthers unappendaged; ovary 2-loculed, the ovules 1 per locule, the stigma incrassate, oblique or recurved. Fruit small, dry, included by the calyx and sometimes adnate to it, dividing into 2 pyrenes at maturity, the pericarp leathery and hard, the exocarp membranous and rarely distinct from the pyrenes.