Βερόνικα της κοιλάδας
Etymology of Veronica arvensis: The genus's name "Veronica" derives from Saint Veronica, the woman who gave Jesus a cloth to wipe his face while carrying the cross on the way to Calvary, and so named because the markings on some species supposedly resemble those on her sacred handkerchief. The epithet "arvensis", which is Latin and means ''from the grassland", refers to the habitat where it usually grows.
There are nine Veronica species/taxa growing on their own in the Cypriot habitat.
Veronica arvensis is encountered in western, central mountainous, and central-northern Cyprus. It is encountered at altitudes between 250-1375. The specimens in the pictures come from Kykkos, Tsakistra (Nicosia district), at an altitude of 132o metres. The species in Cyprus is flowered usually during March and April only.
How to identify Veronica arvensis:
Veronica arvensis has blue color as Veronica bozakmanii, hederifolia, persica, polita, and trifyllos. Trifyllos has unique upper leaves resembling a human hand. The other four Veronicas with blue colour have larger flowers than arvensis, the latter's flowers are around 2-3 mm in diameter only, thus too tiny to compare with the rest.
Veronica arvensis has similar inflorescence only with bozakmanii and ixodes. Ixodes has white flowers of the same, thus the colour is an obvious difference. Bozakmanii's flowers are also blue but they are larger, 4-6 mm in diameter. Additionally, arvensis has pedicels very short, and indistinct, rarely exceeding 2 mm, whilst for ixodes and bozakmanii the pedicels are 3-15 mm long. Finally, bozakmanii was recorded on the Troodos Mountains range only at an altitude of around 1700 metres, whilst arvensis is found up to a maximum altitude of 1375 metres.
