VERONICAS. 



loaves, edged with white down. The flowers are bright-blue, in sprays 

 from the points of the brand r 



V. erecta comes close to V. Hulkeana- 



V. x Fairfieldii is a hybrid of garden origin, which may be a result 

 of V. Hulkeana and V. Lavaudiana. 



V. Hulkeana stirs to warmth even the most frozen heart towards 

 the New Zealand Veronicas. Not only is it supremely beautiful, but 

 it is so supremely graceful as well. It makes delicate bushes of 

 three feet or more, slender to the point of frailness and spindliness ; 

 the branches are set with fatly-fleshy scalloped oval leaves of a clear 

 and softly dark-green gloss ; then from these spring out and up on 

 protracted bare stems, carrying them handsomely clear of the leafage, 

 long broken spires of crowded big flowers in a lovely shade of lavender- 

 blue, giving the effect, on their tall, elegant stems, of bunches of double 

 Lilac in August and September. This beautiful plant is much rarer 

 in the New Zealand wilds (where, unlike these others, mountaineers, 

 it declines to ascend above 500 feet) than in the New Zealand gardens ; 

 in ours, most lamentably does it fail to be trust worthily hardy, but 

 should have a warm, sheltered place against wall or rock, with cuttings 

 securely rooted off in August, and kept safe. 



V. Lavaudiana is a species of only some 3 to 9 inches, lying down 

 for the most part, till its tips rise up to show the wide 2-inch dome of 

 blossom, made up of many crowded, small-flowered spikes. The 

 stems are not free with branches, and are rather densely set with 

 obovato, scallop-toothed leaves, sternly leathery, of a dark-green, 

 usually margined with red. 



V. Raoulii (we are now getting into the true realm of rock-garden 

 New Zealanders) is another weakling of the same kidney, with widely 

 freoly-branching stems of 6 inches or a foot. The leaves are of 

 yellowish green, outspread and rather long on their leaf-stalk, other- 

 wise as in the last ; as are the flower-domes. 



V. pulvinaris utterly breaks away from all previous traditions by 

 making a perfectly dense, mass)', mossy tuft in soft round cushions of 

 •1 or '.<> inches across, with oblong, very narrow little leaves that are 

 neither fleshy nor leathery, but quite normal, with long white hairs on 

 both surfaces above their middle and at their toothless edge. Over 

 this greying tuft of gentleness the largo white salver-shaped flowers, 

 with five or six lobes to the corolla, sit by themselves solitary at the 

 tips of the shoots from which they scarcely emerge. 



V. Thornpsoni is the samo, but a little bigger and broader in the 

 leaf, not so hairy, and with a longer tubo to the flower. Its effect is 

 that of My08Otia ptUvinoris. These should all be jewels of moraine. 



438 



