Leonotis nepetifolia (L.) R. Br.

• Title

  Leonotis nepetifolia (L.) R. Br.

• Author(s)

  Nathaniel Lord Britton, Frances W. Horne

• Scientific Name

  Leonotis nepetifolia (L.) R.Br.

• Description

  Flora Borinqueña Leonotis nepetaefolia Molinillo Lion's-ear Family Lamiaceae Mint Family Phlomis nepetaefolia Linnaeus, Species Plantarum 586. 1753. Leonotis nepetaefolia Robert Brown, in Aiton, Hortus Kewensis, edition 2, 3: 409. 1811. A tall, annual, Old World weed of cultivation, early introduced into America, and now distributed all over the West Indies and parts of South and Central America, north to Bermuda, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas. It is common in waste and cultivated grounds in Porto Rico, readily distinguishable from all other plants of our Flora, by its large, dense, conspicuous, axillary masses of slender, orange, or scarlet flowers. Leonotis (Greek, lion's-ear) is a genus established by the eminent English botanist Robert Brown, in 1811; it includes about 12 species of African herbs, or shrubby plants, with broad, opposite, stalked, toothed leaves, and axillary, densely clustered, yellow to scarlet flowers. The tubular calyx is 10-nerved, with from 8 to 10, unequal, bristle-tipped lobes; the tube of the corolla is curved, the limb 2-lipped, the upper lip erect, the lower lip 3-lobed; there are 4 stamens, in 2 pairs of 2 ; the ovary is 4-lobed, each lobe containing 1 ovule, and the style is unequally 2-lobed. The fruit consists of 4, smooth, 3-angled nutlets. Leonotis nepetaefolia (leaves similar to those of Catnip, Nepeta Cataria) is an upright, softly hairy herb, from 0.3 to 2 meters high. The ovate, stalked, coarsely, and bluntly toothed leaves are from 4 to 12 centimeters long. The dense, axillary flower-clusters are from 4 to 6 centimeters in diameter, the individual flowers on stalks only 1 or 2 millimeters long; the calyx, netted-veined above the middle, is finely hairy, becomes about 2 centimeters long, and has 8, bristle-tipped lobes; the long-hairy, orange to scarlet corolla is 2 or 2.5 centimeters long, its upper lip about as long as the curved tube, the lower lip much shorter, with 3, narrow lobes. The sharply angled nutlets are about 3 millimeters long.