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Botanically, the koromiko and other species grouped together in the genus Hebe are closely related to those placed in the genus Veronica, and the latter designation has been applied to all the hebes in John Dawson and Rob Lucas's New Zealand's Native Trees (2011). However the designation Hebe was retained in the NZ Indigenous Vascular Plant Checklist 2010, and is still (2015) used on the NZ Pland Conservation Network's database, and we will retain it here. Both species are members of the plantain family (the ones that appear on your lawn, not the cooking bananas), Plantaginaceae.
 There are alternating names in Māori, too. While NZ English has incorporated koromiko, along with hebe, as the generic name for Hebe species, in Maori koromiko alternates with kōkōmuka and variants of both names. The archetypical koromiko / kōkōmuka are Hebe stricta, which is the species referred to in the guided tour narrative, and a photograph of which appears on the left, and its look-alike Southern twin, H. salicifolia. These are shrubs or small trees, H. stricta sometimes reaching 4 metres in height. Other variants of these names, all referring both those species, are kōkoromiko, koromuka, kōkoromuka, korohiko, and korokio. H. stricta is also sometimes known as koromio. All of these are locally bestowed names.
Hebe macrocarpa shares the name kōkōmuka, and Hebe parviflora has the names koromiko tāranga, and, along with Pimelia longifolia (Thymelaeaceae), kōkōmuka tāranga. Two other Hebe species sometimes called "koromiko" in NZ English are the spectacular Hebe speciosa (napuka or tītīrangi) and H. diosmifolia (aute).
Elsdon Best records a traditional account concerning an ancestral figure, probably one of the early settlers from Hawaiki, which features a proverbial saying incorporating the korimiko:
Rua-te-pupuke was asked to go fishing. He replied "Na wai te kokomua-tu-tara-whare i kiia kia haere?" (Who says that the kokomua growing on the house-walls should go abroad?) The kokomua-tu-tara-whare is a species of Veronica which is often seen growing on the earth-covered whare puni of this land. The aged Rua meant to imply that he was too old to go a-fishing; he had grown to the walls of his house. This term is often applied to people of a stay-at-home nature. ("The Art of the Whare Pora", p. 633.)
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