Suffruticose aromatic perennials (in ours). Stems numerous from a woody rootstock, with short eglandular simple hairs, slender, leafy. Leaves small, sessile, ovate, entire, gland-dotted beneath, marginal vein thickened. Inflorescence of shortly pedunculate cymes in upper leaf arils forming elongated spikes. Calyx not or scarcely bilabiate, 13 (-15)-ribbed; teeth 5, rather unequal; tube straight, with a bearded throat. Corolla white to purplish, bilabiate, small; upper lip straight, emarginate, glabrous or pilose; lower lip 3-lobed with a larger median emarginate lobe; tube narrow, widening above, not annulate within. Stamens 4, included under corolla upper lip, didynamous; thecae bilocular, spreading, glabrous. Stylar branches 2, unequal. Nutlets oblong, scarcely trigonous, apically rounded, mucilaginous on wetting (in ours).

Generic Limits in the Satureja - Micromeria - Clinopodium – Acinos Miller [not in our area] - Calamintha group of genera have always been an especially difficult problem in the family. It is a global problem not a regional one. Briquet (l.c. p.298) placed all these genera within an all-embracing Satureja; Greuter et al. (Med. Checklist 3: 323. 1986) has recently done like-wise for the Mediterranean taxa. Many other authors have regarded them as independent closely related genera; a course that, without conviction, is followed here. In this narrow sense Micromeria has about 70 species mostly in Europe and W Asia with others in the Sino-Himalayas and SE Asia.

Lower Taxon

• Micromeria biflora (Buch.-Ham. ex D. Don) Benth.

Related Synonym(s):

• Satureja biflora (Buch.-Ham. ex D. Don) Briquet = Micromeria biflora (Buch.-Ham. ex D. Don) Benth.
• Thymus biflorus Buch.-Ham. ex D. Don = Micromeria biflora (Buch.-Ham. ex D. Don) Benth.