VERoNK A. 



out of dark metals in the underworld, and as vital (but far less at- 

 tractive) as the little bay-treee and orange-trees of painted tin that 

 one buys at Marshall and Snelgrove's to adorn the dinner-tables of 

 one's friends. (And see Appendix for Chinese T. pyrohefolia. ft .) 



V. ageria [Paederota ageria) is a local rock-plant of the Eastern 

 Alps, with long clusters of straw-yellow flowers., not very pretty, 

 hanging from the crevices, at the ends of stems of some 4 or 6 inches, 

 in summer. The leaves are in pairs, dark green and smooth, narrow- 

 oval, toothed, and pointed. 



V. aleppica is weakly in its stem of half a foot or 12 inches, which 

 tends to flop in a diffuse mass. The regularly -toothed leaves are 

 larger than in V. oritntalis, which otherwise the plant resembles; and 

 the flowers are pink. Following the example of V. orientalis, it has 

 good value. 



1'. AUionii has been indiscreetly praised. It is a mat -forming 

 species, covering wide spaces on the high turf of the Mont Cenis and 

 the Southern Alps, with creeping shoots after the fashion of our own 

 V. officinalis, set densely with regularly-toothed pairs of thick leathery 

 green opaque leaves lying flat in the ground. The shoots root as they 

 go, and finally, in early summer, from the axils near their tips, send 

 up dense and fluff}' -looking spikes of dark sapphire flowers, huddled 

 in a blur of blue about 2 inches high on a naked stem. It is a rare 

 thing, though locally abundant, and quite easy to cultivate in any 

 open stony slope. But it is not exciting enough for the language 

 that has sometimes been deployed upon it, and its principal charm, 

 in reality, is that the little leaves can be brewed into a most excellent 

 and salubrious tea. 



V. alpiiw deserves prosecution for its false pretences. Under this 

 name we expect something better than this peculiarly ding}- small 

 weed with its large hairy pairs of oval leaves on the weak creeping 

 stems of 2 or 3 inches, that end in a parsimonious little parcel of 

 diminutive flowers in a pale lymphatic shade of slaty-blue. (It is 

 universal in the European Alps, and a special rarity in the Scotch 

 ones.) 



V. americana is a species near T\ Beccabunga and of no value at all. 



V. apennina is a Lovely jewel and a notable improvement on the 

 rather dim V. serpyttifclia. It lives in the damper rocks and beside 

 the mountain springs in Castile and the Apennines; a species with 

 prostrate and abundantly-rooting shoots, with almost sessile pairs of 

 egg-shaped little Leaves, and a generally robuster habit than the 

 :. with looser spires of larger flowers in a much more brilliant 

 tone of blue, making, ultimately, a wide carpet after the fashion 



422 



