General description:- Herbs, rarely shrubs.
Leaves:- Simple (though sometimes deeply lobed), exstipulate, alternate or opposite (rarely all basal, or the uppermost whorled).
Flowers:- Zygomorphic (though sometimes only very slightly), usually in bracteate spikes or racemes, less often solitary in the leaf-axils or in cymes. Calyx usually 4- or 5-lobed, sometimes 2-lipped. Corolla (4)5(8)-lobed or 2-lipped. Stamens usually 2 or 4, rarely 3, 5 or 6-8; staminodes sometimes present. Ovary superior, 2-celled (2-locular) (sometimes 1-locular in upper part and rarely throughout); style single; stigma usually capitate.
Fruit:- A capsule (rarely indehiscent); seeds usually numerous.
SCROPHULARIA
General description:- Herbs or small shrubs; stems erect or ascending.
Leaves:- Usually opposite, entire to 2-pinnatisect.
Flowers:- In cymes (rarely reduced to a single flower) in the axils of leaf-like or reduced bracts, forming more or less distinct terminal panicles or racemes. Calyx equally 5-lobed. Corolla with a short, more or less globose tube and usually 2-lipped limb. Fertile stamens 4; the fifth (adaxial) stamen usually represented by a scale-like staminode,
Key features:-
1) Leaves biserrate.
2) Filaments glabrous or with colourless hairs.
3) Corolla-tube subglobose.
4) Flowers pedicellate, usually in cymes.
VERBASCUM
General description:- Herbs, very rarely small shrubs.
Leaves:- Simple, alternate (very rarely opposite), the basal forming a rosette.
Flowers:- in terminal racemes, spikes or panicles. Calyx equally 5-lobed. Corolla usually yellow, with a very short tube and a rotate, nearly equally 5-lobed limb. Stamens 4 or 5 (sometimes 4 fertile and 1 staminode); filaments usually villous.
Fruit:- Capsule septicidal; seeds numerous.
Most of the species grow in dry, sunny, semi-open habitats such as roadsides, stony slopes, dry grassland, forest-clearings, etc.,
Key features:-
1) Stems erect.
2) Corolla yellow.
3) Leaves lyrate-pinnatifid.
4) Filaments with violet hairs.
5) Flowers in terminal spikes, racemes or panicles.
6) Corolla-tube very short.
7) Stamens exserted.