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Leaves petiolate, with short sterile densely leafy branchlets or fascicles of smaller leaves in the axils, 2–3.5 × 2–3 cm, ± triangular or ovate in outline, 2-pinnatisect or 3-sect with the segments also pinnatisect or 3-sect; the ultimate segments up to 1 cm long and c. 1 mm wide, linear, obtuse to acute; lamina somewhat thick, revolute on the margins, strigose-pubescent or ± glabrous on both surfaces, sometimes with brownish glands, entire or toothed; petiole up to 2 cm long.
Inflorescences of solitary terminal spikes on stems and branches; spikes c. 1.5 × 2 cm, ovoid and dense in flower, elongating to 5–12 cm in fruit; peduncles 1.5–5 cm long, elongating to 10 cm or more in fruit; bracts green, 1/3 to 1/2 as long as the calyx, ovate-lanceolate, densely canescent-puberulous or strigose and sometimes glandular; flowers numerous showy, the upper ones dense and ascending, the lower ones spreading.
Corolla mauve, lilac, mauve-blue, purple, purple-red, deep pink or sometimes white; tube 10–11 mm long, exserted for 3–5 mm from the calyx mouth, glabrous outside, hairy inside at the throat, with two longitudinal dense bands of white setae below the insertions of the lower stamens; limb c. 10 mm wide, the lobes 3–4 × 3–4 mm, broadly obcordate, emarginate.
Calyx 7.5–9 mm long, tubular, becoming wider below and constricted above in fruit, densely appressed whitish strigose-pubescent with some intermixed darker glands; teeth ovate at the base, and abruptly contracted into a long seta 0.75–2 mm long, unequal.
Stems often woody at the base, decumbent, sometimes rooting at the lower nodes, tetragonal, sparsely pilose to pubescent or glabrescent.
Mericarps c. 3.5 mm long, black, striate, longitudinally raised-reticulate in upper part.
Perennial prostrate trailing herb 10–80 cm high.
Stamens included, or with glands just exserted.
Style 9–13 mm long, included, persistent.
