VERONICAS. 



V. propinqua (V. salicornioeides of gardens) can always be known 

 from the real Simon Pure to whose name it pretends. For, while it has 

 the same dimensions of a foot or two (and a tortuous habit, sometimes 

 decumbent), and the same tight, scaly boughs, yet, as in the last, 

 the fat, leathery, fringe-edged triangles of the leaf-tips stand free 

 along the stalks, which are thus not the perfectly smooth, scaly, 

 club-moss branches of the other. We are now emerging more 

 and more with each species from that close-scaled habit, even as 

 before from the spreading, rounded, metallic leafage of the Carnosula 

 group. 



V. cupressoeides continues the process. This stands very near 

 indeed to the last, but is a much closer, neat, tight, round shrub of 



2 or 3 feet or more, built of quite slender, cylindrical, green branchlets, 

 minutely downy, and set only here and there with pairs of little 

 pointed leaves, suggesting the scales of a Cypress. The small flowers 

 are pale blue. 



V. Haastii makes a flopping, woody, twisted mass of densely-leafy, 

 four-sided branches a foot in length, or less or more, the leaves being 

 thick, pointed, and fleshy, standing out in their four rows, and not 

 sheathing the stem. The blossoms are small and white, in dense 

 heads or squashed spikes at the tips of the shoots. 



V. epacridea stands next door the last and fades into it, but the 

 leaves recurve their tips on the same four-sided branches, and usually 

 have a thickened margin of red. 



V. Petriei lies meekly down, rising up at the end of its stems of 



3 to 6 inches. The little leaves are not close, but lax and spreading, 

 with their stalks sheathing the tiny trunk. Each branchlet ends in a 

 spike-like head of blossom, beset with a great number of blunt and 

 very narrow leafy bracts. 



V. dasyphylla lies flat down, and is a stiffly leathern, woody mass of 

 four-square stems some 2 to 6 inches long, and ascending an inch or 

 two at their tips, to carry one large terminal lonely flower. The 

 downy, concave leaves, closely packed in four rows, in spreading over- 

 lapping ranks, are welded pair to pair, and so sheathe the stem. 



V. macrantha stands erect, a foot or two in height, and sparingly 

 branched. The leaves (by now we have got to quite normal foliage 

 again) are oval and bluntly-scalloped, very thick, and smooth, and 

 fleshy, and glossy, with a thick edge. From the axils of the ends of 

 the shoots spring sprays of some half a dozen fine big blossoms of 

 pure white. 



V. Benthami is in the same lino, but the stems aro quite naked 

 below, and densely crowded towards their tips with flat leathern 



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