Flora of New Zealand Series

Veronica cupressoides Hook. f. Handbk N.Z. Fl. 1864, 212.

Original localities: "Upper Wairau, alt. 4000 ft., and Tarndale, Sinclair; Wai-au-na valley, 3500 ft., Travers; Ashburton valley, 2-5000 ft., Haast; Otago, river flats of the lake district and Lindis Pass, Hector and Buchanan". Type: K, Hector and Buchanan no. 7.

Finely, densely branched shrub forming a symmetrically rounded bush 1-1·5-(2) m. tall and 1·5-2-(2.5) m. diam. Ultimate branchlets very close-set, erect, ± 1 mm. diam., flexible, ± glaucous but sts yellowish and glutinous at tips; internodes 2-4 mm. long, exposed; nodal joint obvious. Lvs 1-1·5 mm. long, scarcely connate, narrowly triangular, subacute to acute, rounded on back, fleshy and appressed when fresh, slightly spreading when dry. Infls c. 6-8-fld; fls all sessile or the lower ones subsessile, us. not tightly crowded; rhachis glab.; bracts similar to lvs. Calyx 1-1·5 mm. long; anterior lobes subacute, fused for all or most of length; posterior lobes entirely fused into single obtuse or emarginate seg. Corolla-tube slightly > calyx. Capsule c. 2 × 1 mm., narrow-oblong, somewhat laterally compressed with septum across narrowest diam. but also flattened on narrow-obovate anterior and posterior faces, grooved at septum and emarginate at apex.

DIST.: S. East of divide throughout, from Marlborough to the Otago lakes, but now rare and local, us. on river-flats and terraces up to 1500 m. altitude.

As in the other spp. the capsules dehisce to base septicidally but only at extreme tip loculicidally. After dehiscence the valves straighten out so that old capsules appear predominantly dorsally compressed.