VERONICA. 



of V. repens, but beset with a firmament of much brighter coerulean 

 stars. A cool, moist place will clearly comfort it, when caught. 



V. aphylla leads one to expect nudity and brilliance, but rewards 

 one with especially leafy small tuffeted rosettes of oval hairy leaves 

 in dull pale green, with hairy naked steins of 2 or 3 inches, carrying a 

 small cluster of promptly-evanescent flowers, in varying shades of 

 lilac-blue or violet; It is a general species of all the Alps, in dampish 

 high places, from the Pyrenees to the Levant, but nowhere has it any 

 brightness or beauty. 



V. armena makes a many-stemmed tuffet of weakly stalks from 

 the hardened stock. They are set with pairs of curled-edged little 

 leaves, feathered in specially fine slits, and the flowers are bright 

 blue, borne in short loose spires. 



V. assoana is no more than a form of V. austriaca. 



V. Aucheri huddles itself into very small dense tight tufts and 

 cushions of minute white-velvet leaves, egg-shaped and deeply 

 toothed. The stems are cotton -fine, set with foliage, and packed 

 into an intricate tangle ; they are about 3 inches long, and large lonely 

 blossoms of blue or white emerge, each by itself, from the axils at their 

 end. This dainty beauty lives in the high screes of Demavend. 



V. austriaca comes near V. latifolia, from which it differs in having 

 the leaves feathered on either side to the base. It is a downy feeblet, 

 usually flopping, about 8 or 10 inches long or high, with these pairs 

 of rather large oval feathered leaves, and then from their uppermost 

 axils pairs of loose spikes of large bright blue flowers only just not large 

 enough always to redeem the plant from the charge of loafiness. 



V. Bachofeni is a North American of no merit. 



V. Beccabunga stands for the common Brooklime, which there is no 

 need to introduce into the garden from every English stream-bed. 



V. bellidioeides has all the faults of V. alpina in a rather more 

 obvious form, as the plant is larger in all parts. The leafy hairy 

 rosettes of largish daisy-like leaves, so often seen in the Alps, are of a 

 dead grey tone, and the little blooms, packed sparingly in a head at 

 the top of a hairy and rather leafy stem of 4 or 5 inches, are of a dim 

 and pallid dull blue. V. lilacina, Townsend (V. Townsendii, Gremli.) 

 is no more than a form of this, especially glandular, with stem-leaves 

 larger, anthers nearly white (instead of yellow), and blossoms of a 

 dowdy slate-colour. 



V. Biebersteiniana is an 8-inch species from South Europe, blooming 

 in June, with spikes of blue flowers. 



V. bombycina makes a neat tuffet of lovely woolly whiteness, so 

 close is the clothing of its tiny narrow-oval leaves, from whose shelter 



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