Citation: L., Sp. Pl. 587 (1753).

Synonymy: Not Applicable

Common name: Molucca balm, shell flower.

Description:
Annual herbs to 70 cm high, with few terete branches, glabrous; leaves with the petiole 2.5-4.5 cm long; blade orbicular, ovate to depressed-ovate, 2-4 x 2-4.5 cm, obtuse, crenate to lobed, usually with 5 major veins from the base.

Inflorescence a thyrse without a peduncle, with sessile cymose part-inflorescences often in dense clusters around the nodes and with elongated internodes between them, with leaf-like bracts subtending each part-inflorescence which is covered with spreading spinose bracts of the second order; sepals equally fused into a usually zygomorphic broadly funnel-shaped tube, 15-veined, 20-30 mm long, with 5-8 mucronate lobes, glabrous, with veins often distinctly paler; corolla white to pink with mauve markings, 2-lipped, with anterior lip longer than the tube, to 20 mm long, glabrous except for a few simple hairs on entire hood of the posterior lip, anterior lip with 2 lateral narrow lobes and the anterior one broadly spathulate and with entire margin; stamens 4 fertile, inserted in the throat of the corolla tube, with a filament about as long as the posterior lip; anthers 2-celled with lower lobes diverging to 90ø from the attachment on the filaments, scarcely exposed from the hood of the posterior lip; ovary on a thick disc, deeply 4-lobed, with a style inserted near the base and curved along the posterior of the corolla with a mature 2-fid stigma located among the anthers in the hood of the posterior lip of the corolla.

Mericarps broadly obpyramidal, triangular in section, 3-3.5 mm long, flat at the apex, with the attachment scar with a one-sided depression on the inside, rough to granulate.

	Flowering branch and calyx
Image source: fig. 555A in Jessop J.P. & Toelken H.R. (Ed.) 1986. Flora of South Australia (4th edn).

Published illustration: Sims (1816) Curtis's Bot. Mag. 43:pl. 1852).

Distribution:  Known only from a roadside plant near Snowtown. S.Aust.: NL, SL.   W.Aust.; N.S.W.; Vic.   Native to the north-eastern parts of the Mediterranean and into the Caucasus. Conservation status: naturalised Flowering time: Flowers April.

SA Distribution Map based on current data relating to specimens held in the State Herbarium of South Australia

Biology: No text

Author: Not yet available