10. Veronica persica Poir. (bird’s-eye speedwell)

Pl. 491 i, j; Map 2241

Plants annual, with slender taproots. Stems 8–40 cm long, the branches and tips loosely ascending, the main stems mostly more or less prostrate (often rooting at the lower nodes), sparsely to moderately pubescent with spreading, nonglandular hairs. Leaves mostly short-petiolate, the uppermost foliage leaves sometimes sessile or nearly so. Leaf blades 0.7–2.5 cm long, 1.0–1.5 times as long as wide, ovate to broadly ovate or nearly circular, mostly broadest below the midpoint, rounded or broadly and bluntly pointed at the tip, broadly rounded to truncate or shallowly cordate at the base, mostly not clasping the stems, the margins unlobed, flat, entire or more commonly coarsely scalloped or bluntly toothed, the surfaces usually sparsely to moderately pubescent with nonglandular hairs. Inflorescences terminal, elongate, open, spikelike racemes, but (because the bracts are unreduced and the inflorescence frequently extends nearly to the stem base) appearing as flowers solitary in the leaf axils, with 6–20 flowers, the axis visible between the flowers, the bracts 5–12 mm long, similar to the adjacent foliage leaves and somewhat reduced only toward the axis tip, ovate to broadly ovate. Flower stalks 15–25 mm long at flowering (to 40 mm at fruiting), much longer than the calyces and bracts, more or less spreading or loosely upcurved at flowering and fruiting. Calyces 4.5–8.0 mm long, the lobes subequal, deeply 4-lobed, the lobes broadly lanceolate, pubescent with nonglandular hairs along the margins. Corollas 8–11 mm wide (5–9 mm long), blue (rarely slightly purplish tinged) with darker veins, the lower lobe often paler or white, the throat white, often light greenish at the center, the tube appearing relatively broad, wider than long, the lobes spreading to shallowly cupped. Style 2–3 mm long at fruiting. Fruits 3.5–4.5 mm long, noticeably wider than long, broadly heart-shaped in profile, flattened, the notch relatively broad and deep (0.7–1.2 mm), the surfaces glabrous, dehiscing along the sutures into 2 valves. Seeds mostly 5–11 per locule, 1.2–2.0 mm long, cup-shaped (deeply concave on one side, convex on the other), the convex surface appearing cross-wrinkled, brown. 2n=28. April–June.

Introduced, uncommon and widely scattered (native of Europe, Asia; introduced nearly worldwide). Lawns, ditches, roadsides, and open, disturbed areas.

This taxon was first reported from two sites in Missouri by Castaner (1982b) and Dunn (1982). Since that time, it has spread to at least eleven counties in Missouri, probably as a contaminant in grass seed or garden soil. M. A. Fischer (1987) studied the species in Europe and southwestern Asia and concluded that it was an allotetraploid that likely had arisen through past hybridization between V. polita and a related species that has not become established yet in the New World, V. ceratocarpa C.A. Mey. Superficially, plants of V. persica resemble those of V. polita, but the larger corollas and longer flower stalks serve to distinguish it from that species.