Abstract:
The genus Hebe.
The first plant described in the genus Hebe was Hebe Magellanica which was described by Jussieu in his Genera Plantarum, 105, 1789, from herbarium material collected by Commerson in South America (Pennell, 1921). The New Zealand plants now placed in the genus Hebe were originally called Veronica by early botanists. Cheeseman (1925) in his "Manual of the New Zealand Flora" describes the genus as Veronica of which Hebe constitutes a division. The other divisions are Pygmaea and Euveronica.
The Division Hebe shows the following characteristics: "Capsule turgid or dorsally compressed, the septum across the broadest diameter. Erect or decumbent shrubs from a few inches to 12 or l5 ft.high, more rarely becoming small trees 20-25 ft.high. Flowers in axillary racemes or spikes, more rarely corymbose, very rarely solitary." (Cheeseman, 1925, P. 778)• The dorsal compression of the capsule which involves splitting along the septum in dehiscence, followed by a secondary split of each valve to allow the seed to escape; also the tendency towards tree or shrubby habit and the axillary racemes of flowers are three of the characters used later to reinstate Hebe as a separate genus.
