VERONICA. 



and masses, with tiny wedge-shaped oblong or elliptic foliage, minutely 

 downy, and either entiro at the edge, or, more usually, with a few 

 small teeth. The bloom-shoots are a >me 4 or 5 inches long, and over the 

 whole mass, not in pairs, but lonely from an upper axil of each branch, 

 they spring in summer, bearing a loose shower of large and ample 

 flowers of real heavenly blue, of a rare effect when the wide sheet of 

 green is played over by this dancing galaxy of clear colour. 



V. pinnata is another of the tall and less interesting leafy Speed- 

 wells from Siberia, attaining 18 inches, with blue blossoms in July. 



V. pclifolia is a hoary-grey tuffet from Lebanon, built of 3- or 4-inch 

 shoots, dense with oblong-narrow tiny leaves, regularly toothed and 

 rolled over at the edge. The flowers are pink, in close short spires. 



V. Ponae has small worth. It is a hairy leafy woodlander from 

 damp places of the Pyrenees, growing about 6 or 8 inches high, with 

 a specially loose shower of poor pale-lilac flowers at tho top of the stems, 

 clad, in the usual woodland way, with pairs of large soft leaves, oval- 

 pointed, toothed, and rank in effect. 



V. prostrata is not the same as that variety of V. Teucrium which 

 also passes in gardens under this name, as well as under the no less 

 false one of V. rupestris. It is near V. Teucrium, however, and accord- 

 ingly a plant of high value, making diffuse and microscopically downy 

 masses, and differing from the other in its leaves, which are very narrow 

 and acute, joining the dwarf er stems each by a distinct wee fool-stalk. 

 The abundant spires of intensely blue (or white) blossoms are hhortcr, 

 too, and all the lobes of the flowers are blunted instead of being pointed 

 and starry. It has the same garden use and garden charm of profuse 

 blossom in the summer, and is more suited for a forward place on 

 account of its slightly less rampageous habits. 



V. pyrolaefolia. See Appendix. 



V. repens has quite special charm, however, above most others ; 

 this lovely little Corsican, in any warm level place in good light soil, 

 in sun or shade, immediately makes perfectly unbroken soft sheets 

 of vivid green many yards across (so that it should always be planted 

 for the broadest effects), and these, all the summer through, are veiled 

 by a dense abundance of very pale-blue, almost whitish flowers, sitting 

 flat in the foliage till hardly anything can be discerned but the moonlit 

 unanimity of that carpet. It seeds abundantly, and every pulled-off 

 fragment grows. No cover more delicious for bulbs of medium 

 strength could be imagined, but the effect, in itself, of a dozen square 

 yards of the Veronica, either in its unadorned beauty of emerald 

 green, or veiled in its luminous grey shroud of blossom, is a thing 

 to make the gardener praise and give thanks. There is a variety, 



430 



