MARSH SPEEDWELL

Veronica scutellata

Plantain Family [Plantaginaceae]

month8jun month8june month8jul month8july month8aug

status
statusZnative
flower
flower8azure
inner
inner8white
morph
morph8zygo
petals
petalsZ4
type
typeZspiked
stem
stem8round
sex
sexZbisexual

30th May 2011, Ireland Photo: © Paula O'Meara
The three slanting brownish-green stems slanting from bottom left to top right, with 4-petalled white flowers. It grows 15cm high (up to 60cm) erect or scrambling.


30th May 2011, Ireland Photo: © Paula O'Meara
The leaves are in opposite pairs and very-long triangular over most of their length and moreover are semi-translucent. They alternate at right-angles to each other at long intervals up the stem, which ir round.


30th May 2011, Ireland Photo: © Paula O'Meara
The flowers are between 5 to 8mm across and either white to a pale shade of pink or lilac. The petals are widest in the middle and almost Ace of Diamonds in outline, but with rounded corners. A small round circle in the centre is green. The flower buds are elongated ellipsoids (rugby ball shaped) and remarkably small.


30th May 2011, Ireland Photo: © Paula O'Meara
The semi-translucent nature of (some of) the leaves when viewed against the light. The leaves are without stalks, attached broadly and directly onto the main stem. The plant can be either glabrous (aka without hairs) or hairy. The dark-green leaf just right of dead-centre has a few very short hairs.


30th May 2011, Ireland Photo: © Paula O'Meara
In this frame there are 6 heart-shaped seed capsules with a nick at centre-top from where a long stigma with tiny style protrudes. To help the reader see them, they are a semi-translucent reddish-brown colour. The shape is best seen on the fruit at top right corner.Now the reader should be able to find the other 5 - each surrounded each side by a pair of greenish-red sepals, with one pair of sepals being slightly shorter that the other pair, as usual for Speedwells.


30th May 2011, Ireland Photo: © Paula O'Meara
After the petals have dropped off, there are only 4 tiny sepal teeth (now reddish) and a style sticking out beyond the sepals by about the same distance as the sepal teeth are long.


31st Jan 2019, Badgeworth SSSI, Gloucestershire. Photo: © Mike Baldwin
The ovary in the centre is green, tiny, slightly rugby ball shaped, and with a long white style with white stigma atop. The style length is about the same length as the two pale-blue filaments either side bearing tiny whitish stamens. The flower stalk is long and thin with a bract where it emerges from a side-stem.

The leaves can be entire (aka without teeth) or they may have small teeth nearer the end as here. This specimen has turned deep-reddish brown and is far from semi-translucent.



31st Jan 2019, Badgeworth SSSI, Gloucestershire. Photo: © Mike Baldwin
These flowers are on their side, just to confuse you - their top petal is on the left side of each flower.


31st Jan 2019, Badgeworth SSSI, Gloucestershire. Photo: © Mike Baldwin
This flower is on its side, just to confuse you. The flowers have slightly zygomorphic petals, the two side petals are broader than the bottom petal (on the far right) with the largest (topmost) petal on the left.

The two white styles either side of the white stigma are all hardly discernible against one of the equi-sized white side-petals.



31st Jan 2019, Badgeworth SSSI, Gloucestershire. Photo: © Mike Baldwin
One of the lowest opposite pairs of long-lanceolate leaves clasping the stem without leaf-stalks.

[The bright green leaves to their right are of an interloping plant!]


Uniquely identifiable characteristics - there's almost nothing like this plant on wet marshy grounds.

Marsh Speedwell grows on marshes (get away) and other wettish places like wet meadows and beside fresh water, all on acidic soils.


  Veronica scutellata  ⇐ Global Aspect ⇒ Plantaginaceae  

Distribution
 family8Plantain family8Plantaginaceae
 BSBI maps
genus8Veronica
Veronica
(Speedwells)

MARSH SPEEDWELL

Veronica scutellata

Plantain Family [Plantaginaceae]