Veronica diosmifolia A.Cunn.

A much-branched evergreen shrub 2 to 5 ft high in cultivation but up to 20 ft in the wild; young shoots often minutely downy. Leaves closely arranged in the usual four superposed rows, narrowly oblong, tapered about equally to both ends, finely pointed, margins slit or entire, 1⁄2 to 1 in. long, 1⁄10 to 1⁄6 in. wide, dark bright green above, paler beneath, midrib prominent beneath, but with no visible veins; stalk very short. Flowers produced near the ends of the shoots in June in usually one or three rounded, corymbose clusters 3⁄4 to 1 i n. wide. Corolla pale lavender-blue to white, 1⁄4 to 1⁄3 in. wide, with a short funnel-shaped tube and four lobes, the rearmost (or inner) lobe the largest; corolla-tube as long as calyx. Calyx usually three-lobed, the anterior lobe broader than the others or more or less deeply notched. Flower-stalks minutely downy.

Native of the North Island, New Zealand, discovered by Richard Cunningham in 1834 in the Bay of Islands. Its distinguishing characters are the downy shoots and flower-stalks, the corymbose inflorescence, the usually three-lobed (rarely four-lobed) calyx. It is a neat and pleasing shrub and has been successfully cultivated in the Edinburgh Botanic Garden for over half a century. At Kew it is killed or injured in severe winters. The so-called variety “trisepala” has no proper standing, being based merely on the absence of a bilobing of one calyx segment, thereby making the calyx three-lobed, which is its normal condition in this species.

V. subfulvida (G.Simpson & J.S.Thomson) Garn.-Jones (syn. V. menziesii var. divaricata Cheeseman; Hebe divaricata (Cheeseman) Cockayne & Allan) differs from H. diosmifolia in the following characters: leaves entire; anterior calyx-lobes free for most of their length; corolla-tube longer than calyx.