14. Petalidium Nees in Wall., Pl. Asiat. Rar. 3:75. 1832. in DC., Prodr. 11: 114. 1847; Benth. & Hook. f., Gen. Pl. 2: 1081. 1876; Clarke in Hook. f., Fl. Brit. Ind. 4: 416. 1885.
KAMAL AKHTAR MALIK & ABDUL GHAFOOR
Hairy undershrubs with ovate or narrowly oblong, entire or toothed leaves. Flowers sessile or subsessible, solitary, usually crowded on lateral branches, white or blue; bracts absent or small and narrow; bracteoles 2, large, ovate, reticulately nerved and ultimately scarious. Calyx unequally 5-lobed to the base, lobes narrowly linear-lanceolate. Corolla straight or curved, tube dilated upwards or infundibuliform, limb subequally 5-lobed, lobes twisted to the left in bud, rounded. Stamens 4, didynamous, all fertile; anthers dithecous, oblong, sagittate and bristle-tipped at the bases, Ovary bilocular, each locule biovulate; style long, linear, stigma unequally 2-lobed. Capsule compressed, ± stipitate, 2- or 4-seeded. Seeds discoid, covered with hygroscopic hair, borne on elastically separating placentae.
A genus comprising of c. 35 species, distributed mainly in Tropical and S. Africa and Indo-Pakistan subcontinent. Represented in our area by the following cultivated species:
