Suffruticose, tuft-forming perennials. Stems erect, leafy, glandular- or eglandular-pubescent or glabrous. Leaves ovate to ovate-oblong, sessile or subsessile, crenate to serrate. Flowers on pedunculate cymes in leaf axils or peduncles absent, sessile or shortly pedicellate. Bracts oblong-elliptic to ± orbicular. Calyx not or scarcely bilabiate; tube cylindrical or infundibuliform, clearly ribbed, bearded internally towards throat; limb membranous-scarious of 5 large subequal ovate lobes which expand in fruit and often are coloured pale green, rose or purplish. Corolla bilabiate, conspicuous, with a long narrow tube and short lobes; upper lip shortly 2-lobed; lower lip 3-lobed; flowers sometimes resupinate. Stamens 4, didynamous with the posterior pair longer than the anterior. Style subequally bifid. Nutlets ovoid, smooth or finely tuberculate.

About 12 species in the Irano-Turanian region of SW Asia, especially Iran and Afghanistan.

Lower Taxon

• Hymenocrater sessilifolius Benth.

Related Synonym(s):

• Hymenocrater argutidens Rech. f. = Hymenocrater sessilifolius Benth.