HIGHLAND PLANTS FROM NEW GUINEA. 29 
Veronica Lendenfeldit. 
Somewhat woody, erect or ascending, much ramified, extensively beset with very 
short spreading hairlets ; leaves copious, comparatively small, on very short stalks, of 
rather thick texture, flat, lanceolar-or orbicular-ovate, from above the base or from 
the middle bluntly serrulated; racemes axillar, particularly near the summit of 
branchlets, few-flowered, much longer than the leaves; bracts from lanceolar-to 
inear-elliptical ; pedicels generally about as long as the bracts and calyx; segments 
of the calyx four, nearly lanceolar ; corolla fully twice as long as the calyx, outside 
beset with scattered hairlets, broadly tubular to near the middle, its lobes rounded ; 
stamens shorter than the corolla; free part of the filaments about as long as the 
anthers ; style glabrous ; ovulary beset with hairlets ; fruit about as long as the calyx, 
ovate-or roundish-ellipsoid, rather turgid, at last septicidally dehiscent almost to the 
base, loculicidally dehiscent to about the middle; seeds several in each cell, nearly 
orbicular, slightly concave. 
Summit of Mount Victoria. 
Height of plant about one and a half feet or variously less. Leaves one-third to 
two-thirds of an inch long, without much lustre, their denticles ending into a slight 
slandular enlargement. Racemes seldom reaching more than two inches in length. 
Corolla about one-third of an inch long; its colour not ascertainable here. This 
species is cognate to V. Hookeriana, which however is of dwarf or even prostrate 
habit, has the peduncles longer and as well as the calyx beset with glandule-bearing 
hairlets, has the flowers more crowded, the lower lobe of the corolla slightly bifid, the 
tube shorter. The name of that species in the icones plantarum is Y. nivea, not Y. 
nivalis. Our plant has received the name of Dr. R. von Lendenfeld, now of the 
University of Innsbruck, who during several years’ stay in South-Hastern Australia 
and New Zealand, carried on extensive zoologic particularly spongiologic researches, 
with the earning of just fame, and who may be reminded of the Papuan Highlands, 
which he longed to ascend, whenever he meets the lovely Veronicas at his present 
Tyrolese home. 
A second Veronica was brought from the same locality by Sir William MacGregor, 
differing in leaves narrowly elliptic-lanceolar with lesser vestiture, in racemes fewer 
flowered or reduced to two flowers or even one, in pedicels of less length and fruits of 
rather smaller size; but as otherwise all organs show no structural differences from 
those of the broader-leaved plant, it would be injustifiable, to separate it as a genuine 
species, at least until the two can be further observed in their living state. What is 
assumed here to be a mere variety, comes in some respects near Y. linifolia, but that 
is a much weaker species with a different inflorescence. 
