Perennial herbs, usually treated as annuals in temperate-climate gardens, half-hardy in protected places, of spreading or compact growth, 15-45 cm high when in bloom; stems mostly procumbent, trailing or creeping, or ascending in compact forms, sometimes forming perennial mats 1 m wide in warm climates, slender, tetragonal, usually 30-60 cm long, occasionally to 1 m, densely hirsute or villous; branches numerous, decumbent or ascending, more or less densely soft-hirsute or villous with spreading trichomes. Leaves numerous, the blades chartaceous, usually thick-textured, rather uniformly dark-green on both surfaces or somewhat lighter beneath, often variegated with yellow, rarely entirely chlorotic, those at the tips of the branches smaller, 1.3-8.3 cm long and 1-5.8 cm wide, acute apically, usually truncate or subtruncate basally or cuneately narrowed into the petiole, irregularly incised-dentate from apex to base with numerous acute and spreading, often lobe-like and doubly dentate teeth, more or less densely soft-pubescent or hirsutulous on both surfaces with rather coarse whitish trichomes antrorsely strigose above and usually spreading from the midrib and larger veins beneath; petioles slender, 2-7 mm long, densely hirsute with spreading white trichomes, margined. Inflorescences terminal, large and showy, varying from an extremely flattened corymb to a very long spike, the floriferous portion 4.5-6.5 cm long and 5.5-9 cm wide, 28-55-flowered; spikes at first depressed and corymb-or fascicle-like, later elongating, densely many-flowered; peduncles tetragonal, 3-10 or more cm long, densely white-hirsute or-villous; bractlets lanceolate, much shorter than the calyx, 5-6 mm long, attenuate apically, densely soft-pubescent with whitish trichomes. Flowers closely imbricate and often more or less fragrant; calyx tubular, 0.8-1.5 cm long, 5-costate and-plicate, densely white-hirsutulous, varying from subtruncate and merely undulate to shortly 5-apiculate; corolla hypocrateri-form, large and showy, white or cream to practically all shades of red, yellow, blue, and purple, usually with a white, cream, or yellow spot in the center of the limb and with or without a colored inner rim, sometimes striped, the tube 1.5-3 cm long, usually greenish or whitish, glabrous or obscurely pilosulous, the limb 1-2.5 cm wide; anthers not appendaged.
Home