I.C. Hedge

Perennial herbs, not aromatic, of damp or wet places. Stems arising from a creeping rhizome, leafy, quadrangular, subglabrous to pilose with short simple haws. Leaves dentate to laciniate to pinnatifid, sessile or shortly petiolate. Flowers very small, in axils of upper leaves forming dense, many-flowered globose, distant verticillasters. Bracts ovate to linear-subulate. Calyx campanulate, not or scarcely bilabiate, indistinctly c. 12-nerved; tube shorter than teeth, glabrous at throat; teeth subequal, ± acuminate-spinulose. Corolla not or scarcely bilabiate, hardly longer than calyx, white; upper lobe slightly emarginate and wider than the 3 subequal broad lower lobes; tube ciliate within. Stamens 2, exserted from corolla lobes; thecae bilocular, glabrous, ± parallel; staminodes present or not. Style subequally bind. Nutlets flattened, weakly trigonous, apically truncate.

About 6 mainly N. temperate species; 1 in Australia. With some affinities to Mentha on account of the small corollas with subequal lobes.

Lower Taxon

• Lycopus europaeus L.