VERONICA. 



vitality, rooting and thriving as it goes, with such profusion that 

 there is no trusting it in daintier company. The leaves are steniless 

 on the stalk, narrow-oblong, bluntly scalloped or sometimes here and 

 there with teeth ; the stems are crispulous with a minute wool (the 

 whole growth is faintly downy), and the flower-sprays are sent up in 

 one pair or two pairs from the upper axils of every shoot, and the 

 noble brilliant -blue corollas on their erect foot-stalks in the spike 

 always have the three lower lobes sharply pointed (in V. prostrata, q.v., 

 they are always blunt). V. austriaca differs from this in hardly 

 anything but the greater narrowness of the leaf. Both species are 

 European, and this one abounds from Spain through all Europe to 

 Asia Minor and Russia. It varies widely, and nurserymen have 

 lately sent out a compacta-form, which, if it does indeed belong to 

 V. Teucrium (they attribute it impartially to V. " prostrata " and 

 V. " rupestris "), should be a tidy and delightful prize for select places 

 in the foreground. 



V. thessalica (V. erinoeides) makes as good a copy as it can of 

 V. Kotschyana, and only differs from that lovely neat jewel, in having 

 its small rhomboidal leafage toothed at the edge, and hi wearing its 

 flower-spikes from the tips of the shoots, singly, instead of in pairs, one 

 on either side from their uppermost axils. It is a high-alpine of 

 Greece, living near the snows on the Thessalian Olympus, Kyllene, 

 Parnassus, &c. 



V. thymifolia sometimes shares the same heights. It is a velvety 

 close tuffet, rooting as it goes, standing in close relationship to V. 

 kurdica, but differing in the carriage of its blue blossoms, which are 

 borne in most dense head-like spikes, packed together on stems of 2 or 3 

 inches. The little leaves are very narrowly oblong, swelling to the 

 tip, and, because it lives on the summits of Crete, the plant has some- 

 times been called V. cretica (Pall.), as well as V. teucrioeides, and V. 

 tymphrestea (Boiss.). 



V. urticifolia has no use or value. It is a form of V. latifolia ; 

 both may quite commonly be seen in the damp places of the alpine 

 woodland — tall, lax stems of 15 inches or more, set with pairs of large, 

 hairy, oval-pointed, toothed leaves, which emit from their upper axils, 

 in one or two couples, loose spraying showers of pale-pink flowers 

 that, though pretty in themselves, make no effect against the weedy 

 flaccid stature and the too lush and slack leafiness. 



V. virginica is another tall woodlander, about a yard in height, 

 with the foliage arranged in whorls, and long, slender, terminal spikes 

 of blossoms that are sometimes violet-blue or pink, but in one form 

 white. It is not a thing of choiceness or merit for the rock-garden ; 



(i,996) 433 n.— 2 e 



