VERONICAS. 



V. ciliolata advances another step from the last, with stouter 

 branches, and leathern foliage fringed from the middle with long, stiff, 

 white hairs. The blossoms still have five lobes to the corolla. 



V. loganioeides, though a name common enough in lists, is one 

 of most obscure meaning. It should be a dwarf shrubling of 6 inches 

 or a foot, with weakly- flopping and arising stems almost fluffy with 

 loose, soft, grey hairs, with leathery small oval keeled leaves of dull 

 green, packed closely into opposite pairs up the shoots, and either 

 smooth at the edge or with a little tooth or two on either side. The 

 rather small flowers are borne in ample domes from the tips of the 

 shoots, made up of many clusters from the upper axils. 



V. linifolia is reall}- a beautiful and valuable plant, quite outside 

 the run of its predecessors. In gardens it often stands as V. filifolia, 

 and is a herbaceous perennial of perfect ease and hardiness, sending 

 up each year a fuzz of countless fine stems in a cloud of greenery some 

 6 or 9 inches high, befogged with innumerable fine leaves on long 

 petioles, that blend in the grassy cloud-effect of the whole ; and this 

 vivid nebula, all the summer through, condenses a constant galaxy of 

 daintily-borne stars, of delicious blue or white or pale pink, hovering 

 in flickering flights of sparks from the green mist of the mass. Any 

 comfortable place in any comfortable soil will suit this admirable 

 charmer, which can be multiplied by division or seed. 



V. Catarractae is no less a treasure, and no less indestructibly hardy. 

 It is a charming species, weakly flopping and arising, with its sparingly- 

 branched stems set sparingly with little, thickish, ovate-narrow pairs of 

 leaves, coarsely and sharply toothed. From a final axil of each shoot 

 comes up in summer one long, incurving spray of 6 or 9 inches, loosely 

 set with an airy sprayed flight of large flowers in shades of white or 

 pale pink. It is a most variable thing, and there can be little doubt 

 that the beautiful and perfectly hardy V. " Bidwillii " of many gardens 

 belongs in reality, either as child or variety, to V. Catarractae, which 

 is always safe and vigorous in wide, loose masses in any reasonable 

 place on the rockwork. (Other variations are called V. C. diffusa and 

 V. C. lancifolia.) 



V. Lyallii is a smaller and more prostrate version of the last, with 

 small smooth leaves, so broad as to be almost round, with two or three 

 blunt toothings at either edge. It roots as it pleasantly advances, 

 and sends up delicate, erect sprays of 5 or 6 inches in late summer, 

 daintily balancing a loose spray of large white blossoms veined with 

 pink. This species, again, is widely variable, and one development is 

 called V. L. suberecta ; V. Lyallii of the Bot . Mag. 6456 is a larger and 

 more erect grower altogether, with bigger flowers, and bigger egg-shaped 



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