VERONICA. 



deep featherings, and the flowers of pink or pale-blue from stems of 

 5 or 6 inches, diffuse and spreading. 



V. nummularia grows into neat wandering fine lawns in the 

 Pyrenees. The naked stems go rambling, and are woody at the base, 

 sending up small shoots of an inch or so, packed with overlapping tiny 

 round-oval leaves, smooth-edged, thick, and rather fleshy, with an 

 eyelash of hair at their rim. The blossoms are large and lovely, packed 

 in heads of soft blue at the tips of tho upstanding shoots, with four 

 lobes to the corolla, and a heart-shaped pod succeeding each. 



V. nivalis is another of the valueless little dirty sad-blue Squinnies, 

 after the fashion that this race seems to take, at least in Europe, 

 when it strays to alpine olevations. 



V. officinalis is common enough in the open woods for the garden to 

 be spared its presence. It is a pale peer to F. Allionii. 



V. orchidea makes a terminal spike of blue flowers on stems of 

 nearly a foot high. It is not more than a variety of V. spicata. 



V. orientalis, which has served as the picture for so many nearly- 

 allied species, makes a loose and flopping mass of weakly stems of 

 some 6 or 8 inches from the central stock. They are set with pairs of 

 oblong wedge-shaped toothed greyish leaves, and send out from the 

 upper axils, in summer, one pair or two pairs of short sprays of 

 blossoms, pink or blue. It is a common Speedwell from the drier rocks 

 in the Alps of Asia Minor ; and, in the garden, the type of a useful and 

 interesting group, of which it is itself one of the most brilliant mombers. 

 In gardens it fears no foe in the way of the hottest sunshine, and is 

 often sent out under the name of V. alpina — a vastly inferior article, 

 as we have seen. 



V. Paederota makes huddled downy masses of 2 inches or so, with 

 packed fleshy small foliage in the precipices of Persia, from which 

 depend the heads of tubular bloom in summer. 



V. paniculala is 18 inches high, with rather slack growth and 

 sprays of blue blossom in June. 



V. pectinata makes prostrate velvet-hoary mats of rooting shoots 

 beset with obovate leaves, regularly deep-toothed, and arranged in 

 pairs lower down, but solitary and very rarely opposite each other on 

 the flower-sprays, as these arise profusely in May and June, some 

 5 or 6 inches, carrying largo flowers of pale blue. It lives in all the 

 shady places of the hills from Byzantium away through Asia Minor. 



V. peduncularis belongs to the Caucasus, where it grows 4 inches 

 high or so, with pearly-white stars lined with rose in May. 



V: petraea has some affinities with V. alpina, but is a very great 

 improvement on that dismal little weed. This forms into wide sheets 



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