Description :

• Annual or perennial herbs; stems erect, ascending, prostrate or decumbent, often rooting at nodes and much branched, sometimes fleshy and/or hollow, glabrous or pubescent
• Leaves usually opposite, especially near base, cauline ones sometimes alternate, verticillate or scattered, sessile or petiolate, ovate to lanceolate-oblong, entire or variously dentate or crenate
• Flowers in terminal or axillary racemes, rarely axillary and solitary, bracteate, pedicellate; bracts 0
• Calyx with very short tube, 4(5)-partite, where present, fifth posterior lobe smaller, accrescent
• Corolla barely tubular, usually subrotate, 4(5)-lobed; tube very short, rarely exceeding calyx; limb spreading, lateral lobes exterior in bud
• Stamens 2, fertile, arising in corolla tube at sides of upper lobe, exserted; anthers bithecate; thecae divergent or parallel, confluent at apex
• Ovary bilocular; ovules few to many; style with subcapitate stigma
• Fruit a laterally compressed or turgid, bivalved, loculicidal (sometimes septicidal) capsule, ovoid to reniform or obcordate
• Seeds ovoid or orbicular
• x = 7, 8, 9, 17 (6, 10, 12, 15) (B-chromosomes, aneuploids, high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Veronica L.
  • Linnaeus: 9 (1753)
  • Hiern: 367 (1904)
  • Henderson & Anderson: 292 (1966)
  • Merxmüller & Roessler: 56 (1967)
  • Walters & Webb: 242 (1972)
  • Wells et al.: 536 (1986)
  • Philcox: 80 (1990)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 180, mostly temperate, mainly north, few on tropical mountains in Africa, some subcosmopolitan weeds
• Southern Africa : Species 1: Veronica anagallis-aquatica L., indigenous or introduced from Europe, widespread in wet areas but not Botswana; several others as sporadic escapes or weeds, especially * V. persica Desf