Veronica armstrongii Johnson ex J.B.Armstr.

Described by J. B. Armstrong in 1879 from a plant collected by his father in the Upper Rangitata, Canterbury province, ten years earlier. It has dull, yellowish green leaves, which are thin, not keeled, rounded or truncate at the apex and abruptly narrowed to an acute tip; ultimate branches terete. Whether the true species is in cultivation in Britain is not known; there are no garden specimens in the Kew Herbarium that agree with it.

There is another whipcord hebe grown under the name V. armstrongii which is not V. ochracea and does not agree well with the true V. armstrongii. It is of denser habit than V. ochracea and is golden green in colour, not coppery brown. The ultimate branchlets are shorter than in V. ochracea, slightly four-angled, and the leaves are sharply keeled from tip to base and end in a cuspidate point. This hebe seems to be rare in commerce and no mature plants have been seen. But it appears to be the same as one cultivated in the Edinburgh Botanic Garden at the end of the last century (as V. armstrongii) and figured (from a plant grown by Lindsay of Murrayfield, Edinburgh) in Gard. Chron., Vol. 26 (1899), p. 137. But in Flora of New Zealand it is remarked that the plant figured in the Gardeners’ Chronicle ‘does not well match Armstrong’s type’; not does it agree well with the authentic specimen of V. armstrongii in the Kew Herbarium.