Annual or short-lived perennial. Stems erect or ascending rather slender, 30-50 cm, with a rather dense eglandular retrorse or spreading indumentum. Leaves broad ovate or triangular-ovate up to c. 25 x 25 mm, truncate cuneate or subcordate, crenate-dentate, all petiolate; petiole on lowermost leaves to 20 mm. Inflorescence lax, of many clearly pedunculate cymes, at least below, or verticillasters, lowermost arising from leaf roils, mostly distant. Pedicels up to 3 mm. Bracts linear-subulate, c. as long as calyces, ciliate. Calyx 3.5-4 mm, often purplish, with spreading villous hairs, narrow tubular; throat oblique; teeth c. 1/3-1/4 length of tube, subulate. Corolla lilac to purplish, c. 8 mm. Nutlets c. 1 x 0.6 mm, oblong-ellipsoid, palish brown, depressed-tuberculate, with a bilobed basal areole, mucilaginous on wetting.

Type: [Northern India] Hindostan, Benj. Heyne (?destroyed).

Distribution: Pakistan, India.

Largely because of the absence of a type and a known type locality, this is a problematical species. Presumably it is the same as Bentham’s Nepeta ruderalis, which can be typified. Nepeta hindostana, as defined above, is apparently an uncommon plant in our area; it is dearly allied to the following species (no. 35), to Nepeta brachyantha, Nepeta gracilifora, Nepeta ciliaris Benth. and Nepeta leucophylla Benth. An overall reassessment of the taxonomy and nomenclature in the complex is much needed.

According to Sharma & Kachroo (l.c.) Nepeta hindostana is "abundant in shade of hedges in Gajansu and among low Ziziphus bushes on sandy banks of Batah near Khandwar; I have not seen specimens from Jammu.