Description:
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Annual or perennial decumbent herb, often stoloniferous. Stems 5–60 cm. long, usually rooting at the lower nodes, ribbed, with harsh retrorse pubescence. Leaves opposite, subsessile or shortly petiolate, linear to elliptic, up to 10–35 x 2–9 mm., acute or obtuse and mucronulate at the apex, rounded to attenuate at the base, almost glabrous or usually with fine but harsh pubescence on both surfaces, usually retrorse beneath and at margin, but with forwardly directed hairs above; margin incrassate, slightly revolute, crenate or serrate; midvein prominent beneath. Flowers not resupinate, solitary, axillary, scattered on the stem; pedicels 8–35 mm. long, pubescent with retrorse hairs; bracteoles at the base of the pedicel, 6–16 mm. long, resembling small leaves. Hypanthium obconical or obovoid, ± 10–nerved, pubescent. Calyx–lobes 2–6 mm. long, acute, entire, ± pubescent at the margins and on the outside, often reflexed in fruit. Corolla 6·5–11·5 mm. long, dirty yellow, dull pink, brownish purple or violet (but always ± violet when dried), with two bumps in the mouth of the tube, split on the lower side almost to the base, two–lipped with the upper lip 3–lobed and the lower lip consisting of two spathulate lobes united with the tube for 0·5–2·5 mm; short pubescent outside, often with longer hairs on the midveins of the lobes, glabrous or puberulous inside. Filaments free from corolla, linear, connate above, all pubescent at least on the inside above. Anther–tube ±1·6 mm. long, all anthers densely penicillate at the tip, otherwise glabrous. Stigma–lobes ± 0·6 mm. long. Capsule ± 10–nerved, obconical to oblong–obovoid, up to 10 mm. long, pubescent, dehiscing by valves up to 1–5 mm. long, or ±, indehiscent. Seeds broadly elliptic or subcircular in outline, compressed, ± 0·6 mm. long, distinctly and regularly reticulate, dark brown (description JSTOR) |