Perennial, suffruticose herb with a thick woody rootstock, often of screelike habit. Stems prostrate-ascending, 10-40 cm, slender, purplish, round-quadrangular with a mostly patent eglandular indumentum. Leaves thick-textured, rugose, 4-17 x 4-11 mm, broadly ovate or triangular, crenulate to crenate, cuneate or truncate, with a rather dense indumentum of short eglandular hairs and with or without numerous sessile glands abaxially. Petioles 2-10 mm. Inflorescence 4-sided, terminal, condensed. Flowers subtended by broad elliptic to broad ovate, 5-13 x 4-9 mm, bracts entire, cuneate, acute, purplish brown or green, densely ciliate-villose imbricate cucullate. Pedicels 2-3 mm, flattened, erect. Calyx in flower e. 2 mm with a small scutellum, enlarging in fruit to 2.5-3 mm with a large membranous-inflated scutellum 6-8 mm high; upper lip with numerous very long eglandular hairs; lower lip with shorter eglandular and glandular hairs. Corolla 12-20 mm, dull creamy-yellow with pink, orange or purplish markings, spreading-erect, pilose and with or without sessile glands; tube 8-16 mm, rather wide. Nutlets black, c. 1.5 x 1 mm, densely covered with tufts of minute erect white hairs.