Commemorating the Spanish Jesuit naturalist, Juan Eusebio Nieremberg (1595–1658), first Professor of Natural History at Madrid.
Annual or perennial, scrambling to erect herbs or subshrubs. Leaves alternate, simple, entire, sometimes stalked. Flower clusters terminal or occasionally solitary. Flowers bisexual,mostly slightly irregular, violet or white. Calyx tubular to bell-shaped, with 5 spreading lobes. Stamens 5, 1 sometimes shorter than the others, all attached to the corolla. Corolla tubular, with 5 large, spreading lobes. Fruit a 2-chambered capsule with persistent calyx.
Generally grown as annual bedding and pot plants for the simple, cup-like flowers, occasionally as perennial groundcovers.
There are several nomenclatural variations in this genus that need clarification.
Annuals by seed, creeping plants by division.
Plants grown as annuals; fertile stamens 5, attached at the mouth of the corolla tube.
About 23 species from Mexico to Chile, with a centre of distribution in Argentina.
Symon (1981a).
Source: (2002). Solanaceae. In: . Horticultural Flora of South-eastern Australia. Volume 4. Flowering plants. Dicotyledons. Part 3. The identification of garden and cultivated plants. University of New South Wales Press.