Annual or perennial herbs, suffrutescent below. Stems terete, erect or ascending, simple or branched, pubescent or glabrous. Leaves opposite or uppermost alternate, simple, ± petiolate (rarely sessile), dentate or crenate. Flowers solitary in leaf axils, or in terminal racemes or spikes. Bracts leaf-like. Bracteoles absent. Calyx shortly 5-fid, campanulate or crateriform. Corolla bilabiate, tube cylindrical; upper lip ovate, external in bud, retuse or shortly 2-fid; lower lip much larger than upper, galeate, obovate, 3-lobed; palate bigibbous. Stamens 4, didynamous, included; filaments attached to corolla tube above its base; anther thecae separate, stipitate. Style with bilamellate stigma. Fruit a globose, ovoid, ellipsoid or elongate ovoid, loculicidal 2-locular capsule; valves entire, separating from placentiferous axis. Seeds numerous, minute, elongate-ovoid or ellipsoid, oblique, testa reticulate. 

About 15 species, in tropical Africa, Arabia, Afghanistan, the Indian subcontinent, Burma, Indo-China, S. W. China and the Philippines. Represented in Pakistan by 3 species. 

In the APG III classification (2009) Lindenbergia is included in the family Orobanchaceae.