2 Rhodcra [January 



septicidally dehiscent capsule, has seemed so remote from the plants 

 which we are now considering that I have preferred to call these 

 Veroniceae. 



By a close comparison of species and genera, laying emphasis 

 upon those characteristics which occur in correlation, the taxonomist 

 can go far toward giving us a dynamic view of the races of life on the 

 earth today. In this paper I shall try to group the species in accord 

 with what I believe has been a real evolutionary advance, but it 

 must be realized that few groups hold only old features unmodified, 

 while few contain wholly new ones, although fortunately new char- 

 acters do tend to appear in correlation. A growing knowledge of 

 what are generalized structures in the Scrophulariaceae makes me 

 believe this reconstruction safe. Fuller discussion of the phylogeny 

 of this family is reserved for a later paper. 



Within the small limits of "Veronica," as may be seen from the 

 keys below, we have certain more or less fundamental changes. A 

 septicidal dehiscence of the capsule, splitting along the line of car- 

 pel-union, is certainly primitive for the family. As might be expected 

 in a group so highly modified as "Veronica" (its complexity is shown 

 by the union of the posterior corolla-lobes, reduction of stamens to 

 two, the united stigmas, etc.), we fail to find this method of capsule- 

 dehiscence, but we do find two types which seem to have been de- 

 rived independently from it. In the New Zealand and Patagonian 

 plants which were originally described as Hebe, the carpels part, thus 

 splitting sagittally the septum, after which a distal median suture 

 through the septal wall of each carpel permits the seeds to escape. 

 These plants are shrubs or even trees, and bear their flowers in 

 specialized axillary racemes, a feature the significance of which will 

 soon be discussed. Moreover Hebe has an exceedingly baffling 

 tendency to form local races, a habit at contrast with that of the 

 other "Veronicas." The austral distribution, with its suggestion 

 of genetic remoteness, emphasizes Hebe's claim to recognition as a 

 genus. 



In the other genera septicidal dehiscence has been lost, or persists 

 but as a tardy secondary rupture of the outer capsule-wall and one 

 which never parts the septum. It is most pronounced in the rela- 

 tively primitive genus Vcronieaslrum, called until recently Leptandra. 

 Here, as is normal in Scrophulariaceae and is the case in Hebe, the 

 capsule is longer than wide, and is turgid. The original seed of the 



