Veronica saxicola

Detailed description

Compact shrub, 0.2–0.8 × 0.4–1.0 m. Mature branchlets purple-grey, fading to grey on 2–3-year-old wood; branchlets fleshy, greenish yellow drying purple-black, flattened and ridged, glabrous; internodes 1–10× diameter. Leaf bud olive-green, midrib pink; sinus absent. Leaves 20–67 × 12–30 mm, patent or erecto patent, lamina lanceolate, oblanceolate, elliptic or broadly elliptic, firmly fleshy, adaxial surface ± dull olive-green or dark green with pale yellow midrib, ± glabrous, except for sparse minute eglandular hairs at leaf base; abaxial surface dull pale green, apex cream, obtuse to subacute, base attenuate; margin entire, glabrous, often tinged pink fading to greenish yellow. Inflorescences with 20–130 flowers, lateral, racemose, simple, 20–100(–120) mm long; flowers crowded on rachis, spiraled, mature flower buds dark lavender. Peduncle and rachis with minute spreading eglandular hairs, yellow-green or green, peduncle 40–100 mm long. Bracts alternate, foliose, olive-green, falcate, lanceolate to linear-lanceolate, acute, 3–4 mm long, margins involute, minutely puberulent. Pedicels erecto-patent to spreading 2.0–3.5 mm long, yellow-green, rarely pinkish-green darkening to green-brown on fruiting racemes, minutely eglandular ciliate. Flowers protandrous, hermaphrodite, faintly but distinctly sickly sweet-scented. Calyx lobes 3.80–4.50 × 2.8–4.15 mm, yellow-green or dark green, lanceolate to ovate, subacute to acute, basal 1/3 overlapping, outer surface ± glabrous, usually with very sparse, diffusely scattered minute sessile glands; margin pale pink to dark carmine, mostly eglandular ciliolate, rarely with sparse glandular hairs near base. Corolla initially pale lavender (rarely lilac), tube and basal portion of lobes soon fading to white at anthesis, usually followed progressively by the more distal portions, until ultimately coloured completely white after pollination. Corolla tube 1.0–1.5 × 0.8–1.2 mm, narrowly funnelform, included within calyx lobes, pale lilac-white or white; outer surface glabrous, inner usually glabrous, very rarely with occasional hairs near the base, greenish white, lobes longer than tube, broadly lanceolate to ovate, subauriculate and minutely ciliolate at base, subacute (4.2–)5.0–6.3 × (2.0–)4.0–5.0 mm, erect to suberect, margins inrolled at first becoming reflexed with age. Stamen filaments 8–14 mm long, lilac at anthesis fading to white with age, curving outwards after dehiscence, base glabrous, rarely sparsely ciliate; anthers 0.8–1.0(–1.5) mm long, initially violet fading to lilac and then red-brown following dehiscence, acute, pollen cream to dirty-white. Nectarial disc glabrous, fleshy, green. Style 8–12 mm long, lavender at anthesis fading to white following pollination, glabrous; stigma capitate, yellow. Ovary 1.0 × 0.8 mm, pale pink, narrowly ovoid, ovoid to ovoid-cylindrical, glabrous, occasionally with minute, sparse eglandular hairs along loculicidal suture line. Capsules latiseptate, 3.5–4.3 × 3.2–3.9 mm, dark amber-brown, suborbicular to broadly ovate or broadly rhomboid, subacute, glabrous, septicidal to base, loculicidal for 1/8–¼ length. Seeds ± flattened, ovate to discoid, narrowly winged, surfaces slightly papillate, amber, 1.4–1.8 × 1.3–2.0 mm.