VERONICAS. 



V. Dariuiniana stands close to the next, but the leaves are 

 glaucous-grey and without a keel underneath. 



V. Traversii is one of the hardiest of all, indestructible as any native, 

 forming vast bushes of perfectly neat mi varied pudding-bowl design, 

 admirable for the formal garden as odious anywhere else ; its stiff, 

 straight shoots are set with bright, dark-green foliage ; and their upper 

 axils eject in summer a noble profusion of white blossoms, carried in 

 rather looser and more graceful little spires than the fat and fluffy 

 cat's-tail spikes that have so dowdy an effect in 60 many Veronicas. 



V. subalpina follows quite close. It is a much-branched, erect shrub 

 of some 3 to 6 feet. 



V. verrucosa has an inclination to flop, on the contrary, with its 

 branches of 2 or 3 feet long. It is V. Grayi of gardens, and others 

 close in this relationship are V. obovata and V. monticola. 



V. Cockay niana has flatter spreading leaves, glaucous-grey beneath ; 

 the branchlets are downy, the plant a bush of 2 or 3 feet, and the 

 flowers white, with well-rounded lobes. 



V. anomala makes slender branches 4 or 5 feet long, empurpled 

 at the tips, with redundant spreading foliage, as in V. patens, larger 

 than the spikes of pink or white blossom. 



V. decumbens flops and spreads into a diffuse mass a foot or two 

 across. The branches are of polished ebony -purple, and the leaves 

 are flat and green with a red edge ; while the spires of bloom are 

 graceful, each email white star having a foot-stalk. 



V. Gibbsii leads us close to the next, from which it differs in having 

 its foliage more pointed, and fringed with long, white, woolly hairs. 

 Otherwise its habit is the same, and it makes a stiff bushling of a 

 foot or 18 inches, with spikes of white sessile flowers. 



V. carnosula is the one of this section most usually offered. It is 

 a formal and lifeless-looking stiff bush, varying between 6 inches and 

 3 feet, and the type of many, with its unyielding boughs beset with 

 fat, fleshy, rounded-oval leaves, like flaps of dull hard metal, over- 

 lapping and smooth and leathern ; the upper axils so freely emit spikes 

 of white sessile little flowers, that the ends of the shoots make the 

 effect of being one crowded pyramid of blossom. 



V. amplexicuulis differs only in having ampler leafage, which is 

 more or less heart-lobed and stem-embracing at the base. The spikes, 

 too, are larger and often broader in effect. 



V. pinguifolia hardly differs at all from V. carnosula, except that 

 the leaves are sometimes edged with red, and the capsules are always 

 plain oval-oblong instead of heart-shaped. 



V. Buchanani is almost the same thing. 



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