Habit: Annual to perennial herb, generally glabrous.
Stem: erect, simple or branched at base.
Leaf: generally opposite or whorled (or distal alternate), sessile, linear to ovate, generally wider on non-flowering shoots, entire to dentate, pinnately veined.
Inflorescence: spike or raceme, terminal; bracts reduced, alternate.
Flower: sepals 5, free to near base, lobes +- equal; corolla 5-lobed, 2-lipped, lower lip >= upper, lower side of tube spurred at base, lower side of throat swollen, +- hairy, +- closing corolla below lips; stamens 4, in 2 pairs, included; stigma small, lobes 0 or 2, flat.
Fruit: opening by slits into chambers near tip, +- spheric.
Seed: many, flat and winged or pyramid-shaped and 0--3-ridged.
Species In Genus: +- 100 species: Europe, Asia, northern Africa; many cultivated.
Etymology: (Latin: flax, from flax-like leaves of some)
Note: Corolla length includes spur.
Linaria supina (L.) Chaz. mistakenly reported for California in TJM (1993).
Linaria canadensis moved to
Nuttallanthus.
Jepson eFlora Author: Robert E. Preston & Margriet Wetherwax
Reference: Sutton 1988 Revision tribe Antirrhineae. Oxford Univ Press
Index of California Plant Names (ICPN; linked via the Jepson Online Interchange)Key to Linaria
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