Veronica salicornioides Hook.f.

A sparsely branched erect shrub with rather fleshy stems. Leaves thin, closely appressed to the stem, very short (about 1⁄24 in. long), broadly rounded at the apex, the opposite pairs united for about half their length but not overlapping the pair above; the leaves appear to be decurrent onto the stems and hence to be much longer than they really are but the true node is marked by a faint horizontal line.

A native of the South Island of New Zealand. One of its habitats is the Wairau Gorge near Dunedin, and the figure in N. E. Brown’s article in Gard. Chron., Vol. 3 (1888), pp. 20–1, fig. 3, was made from a herbarium specimen (preserved at Kew), collected in that locality by Travers in 1861. It is not known to be in cultivation. The plant sometimes seen in gardens under the name Hebe salicornoides aurea does not belong to this species and is near V. propinqua.