Thursday 3 February 2005

Meconopsis integrifolia - Photos In The Wild

Big Snow Mountain. Large upright globe flowers typical of M. integrifolia. Other diagnostic characters not visible - short style and flat stigma and leaf vein structure. Photographer Martin Walsh. Big Snow Mountain habitat. Martin Walsh.
Garden grown from Sichuan seed. Images of this species and M. pseudointegrifolia need back of leaf to show veining, stigma and style and also a whole plant shot to show disposition. Pale colour and indeterminate leaf veining support M. pseudointegrifolia but short stigma and style and upright flower M. integrifolia. Location suggests M. integrifolia. Da Xue Shan - Big Snow Mountain Yunnan. Upright pale yellow flowers - style and stigma not visible (key features). The leaf - next image - is not really 3 veined (as Sichuan M. integrifolia are) Images also taken on this mountain by the webmaster are under M. pseudointegrifolia. Photographer Margaret Thorne.
Leaf from same plants as previous image. Underside of leaf really needs photgraphing but the leaf veining appears random. Both species are not meant to occur together and on balance the webmaster thinks all the images on this page up to this picture are M. pseudointegrifolia but it illustrates the difficulties involved. Photographer Margaret Thorne. At it's superlative best - really large deep yellow flowers.Absolute classic image of this species, Nr Wolong, Balang Shan. 4110m. Sichuan. Harry Jans.
Typical seed pods with flat stigma directly on ovary and no style. Maqin, Qinghai. Hilary and John Birks. This is a critical image from the Da Xue Shan in Yunnan. C. Grey-Wilson in 1996 in the New Plantman shows a map of the distibution of M. integrifolia and the species he resplit (after Taylor 1934 lumped them) M. pseudointegrifolia. This site has only the latter species. Low down the plants show the characteristics of M. pseudointegrifolia (see that species for images from this mountain) The higher one goes the more upright, globe shaped and yellow the flowers. The leaves become more 3 veined at height but not so markedly as the Sichuan population.