Agastache

PLANT: Perennial herbs, pubescent, glandular, the hairs straight, the glands sunken; stems erect or sometimes prostrate. LEAVES: opposite, linear, lanceolate or triangular, green; margin entire, serrate or crenate. INFLORESCENCE: an indeterminate spike or raceme. FLOWERS: calyx membranous, bicolored, actinomorphic or nearly so, 5 toothed, the teeth free (or 3 upper teeth partially connate), deltoid to attenuate; corolla tubular, zygomorphic, white, yellow, orange, pinkish or purple, the upper lip of 2 fused lobes, the lateral lobes 2, more fused to the upper lip than the lower lobe, the lower lobe clawed with its limb repand, erose or lacerated; stamens 4, exserted from corolla tube but not always exceeding corolla lobes, the filaments adnate to corolla, the anther sacs parallel; style branches equal; ovary lobes nestled in depressions atop the gynophore. NUTLETS: ovoid to oblong, triangular in cross section, with hairs on upper half. x = 9. NOTES: 22 spp.; sw U.S. and n Mex. (Greek: agan = much, stachys = spikes). Sanders, R. W. 1987. Syst. Bot. Monogr. 15:1 92. REFERENCES: Christy, Charlotte M. 2003. Lamiaceae J. Ariz. - Nev. Acad. Sci. Volume 35(2).

Cal nearly regular, the 15-nerved tube somewhat oblique at the throat, the 3-nerved lobes about alike; upper cor-lip directed forward, shallowly 2-lobed, the lower lip 3-lobed, its central lobe expanded and decurved, but its lateral lobes displaced onto the summit of the cor-tube; stamens 4, exsert, the 2 lower curved upward under the upper cor-lip, the 2 upper longer and downcurved; pollen-sacs parallel or nearly so; nutlets minutely hairy at the tip; perennial herbs with numerous rather small fls crowded in dense verticils subtended by inconspicuous bracts, forming terminal, continuous or interrupted spike-like infls. 20, N. Amer. and se. Asia.

Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.

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