Stalked Blue. A Speedwell, Veronica kotschyana Benth., Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
I suppose just about anyone who has an eye for Spring Wildflowers is enraptured by the beautiful Azure of Bird's-eye Speedwell, those little blue flower dots in the grass. We don't usually associate Speedwell with quite upright and relatively highly stalked plants, perhaps 30 cm tall.
Here then is Veronica kotschyana Benth., hailing from Turkey, in the Hortus Botanicus of Amsterdam. Its pale blue almost mauve in a weak Spring Sun delighted me.
Our plant was named by the English botanist George Bentham (1800-1884) in 1846 for Karl Georg Theodor Kotschy (1813-1866), an intrepid Austrian botanical explorer. Kotschy travelled widely in the Near East and Northern Africa, and he collected over 300,000 specimens! Wow! Anyway, there's today still a herbarium exemplar of this plant which he preserved in 1836. Kotschy found it in the Taurus Mountains of Southern Turkey, and he named it Veronica billardieri. That name is to honor Jacques Julien Houtou de Labillardière (1755-1834). Labillardière was also an inveterate naturalist traveller and explorer, and a great collector of specimens in among other far-flung places, Australia, who had died just as Kotschy was setting out on his expedition.
The present name 'Kotschyana' is according to The Plant List as yet still an 'unresolved name', which means that it could not be ascertained as an accepted name or a synonym...
PS As I was looking at this photo for posting, I noticed, too, a little insect in the right hand flower.
Stalked Blue. A Speedwell, Veronica kotschyana Benth., Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
I suppose just about anyone who has an eye for Spring Wildflowers is enraptured by the beautiful Azure of Bird's-eye Speedwell, those little blue flower dots in the grass. We don't usually associate Speedwell with quite upright and relatively highly stalked plants, perhaps 30 cm tall.
Here then is Veronica kotschyana Benth., hailing from Turkey, in the Hortus Botanicus of Amsterdam. Its pale blue almost mauve in a weak Spring Sun delighted me.
Our plant was named by the English botanist George Bentham (1800-1884) in 1846 for Karl Georg Theodor Kotschy (1813-1866), an intrepid Austrian botanical explorer. Kotschy travelled widely in the Near East and Northern Africa, and he collected over 300,000 specimens! Wow! Anyway, there's today still a herbarium exemplar of this plant which he preserved in 1836. Kotschy found it in the Taurus Mountains of Southern Turkey, and he named it Veronica billardieri. That name is to honor Jacques Julien Houtou de Labillardière (1755-1834). Labillardière was also an inveterate naturalist traveller and explorer, and a great collector of specimens in among other far-flung places, Australia, who had died just as Kotschy was setting out on his expedition.
The present name 'Kotschyana' is according to The Plant List as yet still an 'unresolved name', which means that it could not be ascertained as an accepted name or a synonym...
PS As I was looking at this photo for posting, I noticed, too, a little insect in the right hand flower.