Perennial tufted, suffruticose herb with a thick woody rootstock. Stems 8-30 cm, erect, slender, round-quadrangular, much branched; indumentum of short dense eglandular, weakly retrorse hairs, becoming longer, patent and glandular above. Leaves thick-textured, narrow ovate or ovate, 3-14 x 1.5-9 mm, crenate to strongly crenate, cuneate, acute; indumentum of dense short eglandular and rarely glandular hairs, adaxial surface with numerous sessile glands. Petioles to 8 mm; upper leaves sessile. Inflorescence 4-sided, lax, rarely condensed, terminal; flowers subtended by the elliptic 5-6 x 2-3 mm bracts, which are entire or subentire, cuneate, acute, purplish or not, not or scarcely overlapping, cucullate, thin-textured, densely glandular and eglandular ciliate or pilose. Pedicels 2.5-3.5 mm, ± erect, ± flattened. Calyx c. 1.5 mm, with a small, usually purple scutellum, enlarging in fruit to 3 mm with a 2 mm high scutellum; indumentum similar to inflorescence axis. Corolla 18-23 mm, white, yellow with purple lips, or dark purple, spreading-erect or erect, densely glandular and eglandular pilose; tube 13-17 mm. Nutlets smooth, covered with adpressed hairs, grey-black, c. 1.5 x 1 mm.