Nemesia fruticans flowers, buds and fruit

Nemesia fruticans, the common wild nemesia or in Afrikaans the wilde leeubekkie (little wild lions mouth), is sometimes considered to be a shrublet, otherwise a perennial.

There is a fine line, or more appropriately a grey area between herbs and shrubs as with many biological border areas separating species. This plant is on the herb-shrub border or in it.

Artificial human categories to facilitate learning, useful as they may be, mean nothing to plants and are not respected by the natural diversification processes in the continuous evolution of species. Border areas may vanish gradually in species "clarification", lost from no further offspring issued by the plants that populated them.

The two-lipped flowers of N. fruticans may be pink, lilac, mauve or white. The upper lip has four oblong lobes with rounded tips, resembling short fat fingers. There are dark, narrow, vertical lines from the base of the upper lip. The lower, two-lobed lip has bright yellow markings at the base on two oblong mounds. This lip has an irregularly rounded margin that may be partly curved under.

The almost cylindrical spur at the back of the flower points obliquely downwards and tapers slightly towards its tip. It becomes about 4 mm long.

Flowering happens towards the end of winter and in spring.

The fruit capsule that follows a successful flower is laterally compressed and two-chambered (Manning, 2009; Van Wyk and Malan, 1997; www.redlist.sanbi.org).