Perennial herb with a slender rootstock. Stems few or several, branched or not, 20-40 cm, erect or ascending, usually slender, pilose with eglandular white spreading or retrorse hairs. Leaves thin-textured, 10-30 x 5-20 mm, broadly ovate to ovate-oblong, subentire, crenulate to serrate, rounded at base, acute above, sparingly pilose especially on veins beneath, with or without scattered sessile oil globules; petiole to c. 10 mm, often much less. Verticillasters in axils of upper leaves, 10-20 (-40)-flowered, loose or more or less so, remote, terminal and axillary. Bracts 1.5-4 mm. Pedicels erect-spreading, 2-3 mm. Calyx 5-6 mm, curved, with long spreading eglandular hairs and with or without scattered capitate glandular hairs; teeth of upper lip 0.5-1 mm, triangular; teeth of lower lip c. 1.5 mm subulate, ciliate. Corolla pink to purple, 6-9 mm; tube included within or scarcely exserted from calyx teeth. Thecae glabrous, parallel or divergent. Nutlets c. 0.8 x 0.5 mm, smooth, subglobose, with a white attachment scar.

Fl. Per.: May-July.

Type: [USSR] Caucasus, circa Ananour et Dushet, Steven (H).

Distribution: NE Turkey, Caucasus, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Himalaya (Kashmir to Nepal and Bhutan), India, Sri Lanka, Burma, China, Malaysia, Taiwan, Islands of SE Asia.

Closely related to the previous species but, even where their ranges overlap, there are usually no difficulties of identification. Often growing in damp places and cultivated ground. Commoner than Clinopodium vulgaris. R. R. Stewart (1961, l.c.) noted that this was a very common plant in the Deosai plains. Gynodioecism apparently occurs in both species in the form of male-sterile plants or plants in which there is partial malformation of the thecae.

In the eastermost parts of the species range a var. souliei (Levl.) McKean is sometimes recognized which, if accepted, means that our taxon would have to be called Clinopodium umbrosum var. umbrosum.