Veronica brachysiphon (Summerh.) Bean

An evergreen shrub up to 6 ft high, or more, forming a wide-spreading, rounded bush of dense habit; branches erect, at first minutely downy, soon becoming quite glabrous. Leaf-bud with a narrow sinus. Leaves densely arranged on the shoot (ten or twelve to the inch), superposed in four vertical rows; narrowly oval or oblong, sometimes slightly obovate, 1⁄2 to 1 in. long, 1⁄6 to 1⁄4 in. wide, pointed, tapered at the base to a short, broad, hinged stalk, dark, rather dull green. Racemes produced in July from the leaf-axils near the end of the shoot, usually about 3⁄4 in. long, 3 in. wide, the main-stalk minutely downy. Flowers 1⁄4 to 1⁄3 in. in diameter, white. Sepals ovate with minute hairs at the edges. Corolla-tube broad, about twice as long as calyx. Anthers purple-brown. Seed-vessel 1⁄6 in. long, much compressed, about twice as long as the sepals. Bot. Mag., t. 6390.

Native of New Zealand; introduced about 1868. This has proved the most hardy, and on the whole the most ornamental of New Zealand veronicas in gardens. The only time I have seen it killed by cold was in February 1895. It makes a handsome and shapely evergreen, worth growing on that account alone, but it has the additional attraction of flowering freely and regularly after mid­summer, when shrubs in flower cease to be abundant. It is pleasing as an isolated specimen on a lawn.