Erect or ascending perennial herbs. Stems with eglandular often retrorse hairs, leafy. Leaves ovate, crenulate to subentire, shortly petiolate. Inflorescence of distant few-to many-flowered verticillasters borne in the axils of the upper leaves. Bracts linear. Flowers white, pink or purplish, shortly pedicellate. Calyx bilabiate, curved, 13-veined; throat pilose or not; teeth prominent, long-ciliate ± upward curved, lower longer. Corolla bilabiate; upper lip short straight emarginate, pilose; lower lip 3-lobed median entire or emarginate; tube not annulate within. Stamens 4 included under upper lip of corolla, didynamous; thecae 2-locular, glabrous, divergent, with a swollen connective. Stylar branches markedly unequal. Nutlets ovoid to obovoid, smooth, scarcely trigonous, apically rounded.

A Mediterranean-Euro-Asiatic genus most closely related to Calamintha but with curved calyces and many-flowered verticillasters.

Lower Taxa

• Clinopodium umbrosum (M. Bieb.) C. Koch
• Clinopodium vulgare L.

Related Synonym(s):

• Calamintha clinopodium Spanner = Clinopodium vulgare L.
• Calamintha repens (D. Don) Benth. = Clinopodium umbrosum (M. Bieb.) C. Koch
• Calamintha umbrosa (M. Bieb.) Fisch. & Meyer = Clinopodium umbrosum (M. Bieb.) C. Koch
• Calamintha vulgaris (L.) H. Karst = Clinopodium vulgare L.
• Melissa clinopodium Benth. = Clinopodium vulgare L.
• Melissa umbrosa M. Bieb. = Clinopodium umbrosum (M. Bieb.) C. Koch
• Satureja clinopodium Car. = Clinopodium vulgare L.
• Satureja umbrosa (M. Bieb.) Scheele = Clinopodium umbrosum (M. Bieb.) C. Koch
• Satureja vulgaris (L.) Fritsch = Clinopodium vulgare L.