Fischer, E. (2006) Verbascum in Flora of Somalia 3: 264-265
Plants usually herbs, rarely small shrubs, glandular-pubescent to densely villous, usually with branched hairs, rarely glabrous. Leaves in a basal rosette and alternate on the stems, entire or pinnatifid to pinnatisect, pinnately veined. Inflorescences terminal, racemes or panicles of widely to densely spaced cymose flower clusters, often appearing spikelike. Flowers shortly to distinctly pedicellate; calyces deeply 5-lobed, lobes equal; corollas usually yellow, rarely violet or purple, 5-lobed, subrotate, more or less radially symmetric to somewhat bilaterally symmetric, the 2 upper lobes slightly shorter than the 3 lower lobes; stamens 4-5, equal, exserted, if 5 median stamens sometimes reduced to astaminodes; filaments usually villous; anthers with 2 confluent thecae, their bases rounded; ovaries ovoid to globose, usually densely pubescent, 2-celled; styles straight, filiform, mucronate bases persistent in fruit; stigmas capitate. Fruits capsules with septicidal dehiscence; seeds numerous, pitted.
Verbascum includes about 130 species. It is native to Europe, Asia, and from northeastern Africa to Kenya.
One species, Verbascum sinaiticum, is known from Somaliland and Somalia.