Classical name.
Densely branched annual or perennial herbs and subshrubs. Leaves opposite. Flowers axillary or in short terminal clusters, fragrant; winter to spring. Calyx 5-lobed. Corolla 2-lipped, with a short tube which has a spur at the front and a throat that is strongly constricted. Stamens 4, sometimes overlapping. Fruit a flattened capsule.
Grown as a range of colour cultivars and seed mixes, sometimes with spotted throats, used for annual bedding or as pot plants and derived from N. strumosa and N. versicolor. It is likely that most plants listed under N. strumosa Benth., N. fruticans (Thunb.) Benth. [N. foetens Vent.] and N. versicolor Benth. belong in this group of hybrids.
Seed.
Bedding plants with short corolla tubes, sepals more or less free and sterile stamen absent.
65 species from the tropics and S Africa.
Source: (2002). Scrophulariaceae. 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.
