Annual to perennial herbs or dwarf shrubs, usually glandular-pubescent or pilose. Stems prostrate to erect or climbing. Leaves motly alternate simple or sometimes deeply divided entire, dentate, or lobed, hastate or sagittate, subsessile to petioalte. Flowers zygomorphic, pedicellate, solitary in leaf-axils or racemes. Calyx deeply divided, lobes entire, more or less equal. Corolla-tube spurred; limb 2-lipped, the upper lip 2-lobed or emarginate, the lower lip 3-lobed; spur conical or cylindrical. Stamens 4, all fertile, didynamous, included, staminode minute; anthers ciliate, marginally coherent, forming a ring-like structure. Style simple; stigma capitate. Capsule ovoid to subglobose, many-seeded or rarely few-seeded, dehiscence operculate, with a detachable lid produced by a circumscissile split. Seeds ellipsoid, reniform or ovoid.
A genus with about 9 species, distributed in Europe, W. African Islands, North and North-East Africa, South, Central and South-West Asia, but widely introduced elsewhere. Represented in Pakistan by one subspecies.
In the APG III classification (2009) Kickxia is included in the expanded family Plantaginaceae.