Nemesia barbata flowers

These Nemesia barbata flowers have faint dark vein lines from the bases of the four erect lobes of each upper lip across their white surfaces. The large lower lips that may also be bright to deep blue on some plants are here about black in their lower parts, blue near and in the bulging bearded sections.

Commonly the bloubekkie in Afrikaans, the plant may also be called the bloubaardbekkie (little blue bearded maw), drawing attention to the hairy strip across the base of the lower lip, ready to tickle insect bodies. This beard is a sparse, unkempt stubble, white as if the hair on the absent face would be grey or gone. In the background, some oblong, grey and hairy sepals angle and curve out around corolla bases.

The flower bases appear square on longish pedicels (Curtis-Scott, et al, 2020; Vlok and Schutte-Vlok, 2015; Manning, 2007; iNaturalist).