Virectaria Bremek.

Annual or perennial herbs or subshrubby herbs with erect or procumbent glabrescent to stiffly hairy stems from a fibrous rootstock. Leaves paired; stipules small, entire, deltoid, or fimbriated with linear setae from a short base. Flowers small, hermaphrodite, never dimorphic, in few–many-flowered cymose clusters at the apices of the main shoots. Calyx-tube ovoid or urceolate, often bristly hairy; lobes 5–6, equal or unequal, spathulate, filiform or lanceolate with small glands between each pair. Corolla-tube filiform to narrowly infundibuliform; lobes 4–6(–7), deltoid to lanceolate, suberect; throat practically glabrous save for an obscure ring of hairs some distance below the orifice. Stamens 4–6, much exserted. Ovary bilocular; ovules attached to placentas which are affixed to the central partition; style much exserted, often overtopping the corolla-lobes; stigma subcapitate. Disc cylindrical or consisting of two separate cones, Capsule very characteristic, subglobose, splitting in a plane at right-angles to the central partition into 2 valves one of which usually falls away entirely but the other remains attached to the rachis by means of a woody pedicle. Seeds small, brownish, subglobose, reticulately pitted.