VERONICA AGRESTIS

Family and Genus:- See- PLANTAGINACEAE/Sect. POCILLA

Common Names:- Green field speedwell

Homotypic Synonyms:- None

Meaning:- Veronica (L) For Saint Veronica, who wiped the sweat from Christ's

face.

Agrestis (L) Rustic, barbarous, wild on arable land.

General description:- Pubescent annual

Stems:-

1) 5-30 cm, procumbent or decumbent.

Leaves:-

1) 5-15 mm, longer than wide, shortly petiolate, ovate with a more or less truncate

base, crenate or crenate-serrate, mostly alternate but the lowest opposite.

Flowers:-

1) Solitary in the leaf-axils.

2) Pedicels, 5-15 mm, usually recurved in fruit.

3) Calyx-segments, 3-6 mm, ovate to ovate-lanceolate, subobtuse, not overlapping

at the base.

4) Corolla, 3-6 mm diam, usually whitish with a blue or pink upper lobe.

Fruit:-

1) Capsule, 3-4 x 4-6 mm, 2-lobed,

a) lobes, with deep, narrow sinus, not or slightly keeled, sparsely glandular

hirsute.

2) Seeds, c. 1·5 x 1·25 mm, broadly elliptical, concave on one face.

Key features:-

1) Capsule, not or only slightly keeled, with sub-parallel or slightly divergent lobes.

with sparse, long glandular hairs only.

2) Corolla, less than 8 mm diam; usually whitish.

Click here for a glossary of terms used.

Habitat:- Dry open shrubby vegetation, fallow fields, roadsides and gravelly

streambeds. 0-1200 m.

Distribution:- Scattered and fairly rare in mainland Greece and the Ionian Islands

not reported from Peleponnisos. - Widespread in Europe, scattered in temperate

Asia. Fairly rare on Crete, known from a few scattered locations, (see map).

Flowering time:- Mar to early June.

Photos by:- Kind permission of Saxifraga - Free Nature Images & Wiki-Commons