Priva Adans.

Herbaceous, caulescent perennials, mostly harshly pubescent throughout; stems, branches, and branchlets more or less tetragonal, often decumbent. Leaves decussate-opposite or subopposite, simple, exstipulate, thin-membranous, sessile or petiolate. Inflorescences terminal and axillary, indeterminate, racemiform, often subspicate during anthesis, narrow, erect or subflexuous. Flowers mostly small, solitary in the axil of a small bractlet, arranged in a spirally alternate or pseudosecund manner on an elongated rachis, never whorled; calyx gamosepalous, tubular during anthesis, 5-ribbed, slightly 5-plicate, slightly irregular or nearly regular, terminating in 4 short and equal or subequal teeth, persistent, accrescent, enlarging with and investing the fruit; corolla gamopetalous, more or less irregular, hypocrateriform or infundibular, surpassing the calyx, the tube straight or some-what curved, more or less ampliate apically, the limb spreading, oblique, more or less bilabiate, the abaxial lip 3-lobed with 1 large central and 2 medium-sized lateral lobes, the axial lip 2-lobed, with usually very small lobes; fertile stamens 4, didynamous, the upper pair better developed and usually inserted slightly above the middle of the corolla-tube, the lower pair inserted approximately at the middle of the tube, all included or equaling the tube, the anthers erect, ovate or oblong, 2-thecate, dorsifixed at or below the middle, introrse, the connective usually con-spicuously thickened and sagittate, unappendaged, the thecae parallel or divergent basally, dehiscing by longitudinal slits, the fifth (posterior) stamen reduced to a minute staminode or absent; ovary 4-loculed or (by abortion) 2-loculed, the ovules basal, erect, anatropous, 1 per locule, the style usually equaling the lower stamens, 2-lobed apically, the anterior lobe longer and recurved or erect, stig-matiferous apically, the posterior lobe reduced, minute and tooth-like not stig-matiferous. Fruit a dry, often woody schizocarp included by the fruiting-calyx, composed of 2 usually similar, 2(or by abortion 1)-loculed cocci which separate easily at maturity, the pericarp hard, the dorsal surface echinate, scrobiculate or ridged, the commissural surface excavated, concave, or plane; seeds lacking endo-sperm.