IRbofcora 



JOURNAL OF 



THE NEW ENGLAND BOTANICAL CLUB 



Vol. 23. January, 1921. No. 265. 



"VERONICA" IN NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICA. 

 Francis W. Pennell 



This study is the outgrowth of several attempts to revise our 

 knowledge of the species of " Veronica" growing in different portions 

 of the Western Hemisphere. Whether in our own "Local Flora," 

 in the Rocky Mountain or the Southeastern States, or in Colombia 

 and Ecuador, certain wide-ranging species were encountered, and the 

 effort to verify the nomenclature in many instances took the reviewer 

 into problems of the identity of Old World allies. On these accounts 

 it has seemed best to consider in one study the plants of this group 

 in both North and South America, and also to include known natural- 

 ized species. 



Of all the tribes of the Scrophulariaceae mentioned by von Wett- 

 stein in his great revision of the family in " Die Natiirlichen Pflanzen- 

 familien," that of the Digitaleae, to which Veronica is assigned, prob- 

 ably has least coherence. The plants at least should agree in having 

 the antero-Iateral lobes of the corolla external in aestivation and in 

 not being parasites. I know of no offenders against the latter crite- 

 rion. But, because they possess not only posterior corolla-lobes 

 external but also form characteristic glands on the fruit or in the 

 leaves, I have recently transferred the two lowland Tropical genera 

 Capraria and Scoparia to the essentially Tropical tribe Gratioleae. 

 This restricts the Digitaleae to a more likely distribution through 

 the Temperate or Arctic zones and the cooler zones of Tropical 

 mountains. I can not further analyze the tribe here, except to say 

 that Digitalis itself, through possessing styles distinct at apex and a 



