Annual, biennial or perennial, herbs or small shrubs, glabrous or hairy, hairs often stinking. Leaves opposite or the upper alternate, entire to 3-pinnatisect, translucently dotted. Inflorescence lax, a terminal, simple or somewhat branched thyrse, cymes axillary or terminal, racemose or spicate. Flowers small, rarely rather large, green-purple, dirty brown or yellow. Calyx deeply 5 lobed, lobes obtuse – circular, rarely slightly acute to acuminate. Corolla tube inflated, globose or oblong with a bilabiate limb, lobes 5, short, flat, 4 upper erect, lower spreading. Stamens 4, didynamous, declined, included or exserted, the fifth stamen usually represented by a scale-like staminode or absent, dehiscing by apical transverse slits. Disc oblique, style slender or rarely with capitate stigma, stigma notched. Capsule ovoid or subglobose, acute or beaked, septicidal, valves entire or bifid at apex. Seeds many or few, ovoid or oblong, wrinkled or pitted.
A genus with c. 200 species, mainly distributed in Asia, Europe and N. America. Represented in Pakistan by 19 species.