News - Summer 2012

This summer I flowered 6 different seed numbers of M. integrifolia which were all collected wild in China.  Not One of them resembled the deep yellow dwarf upward flowering plants illustrated on this website and taken by Harry Jans at the very north of the range of this species.  None had absolutely consistent 3 veined leaves which is a defing character of this species and a major separation from M. pseudointegrifolia.  None of the flowers was such an intense deep yellow and upright and none had no style with a Papaver like stigma.  None however would have passed as M. pseuodointegrifolia with obvious long styles, pendulous deep flowers of a cream yellow. Clearly there is a cline right through from a deep yellow northern upright plant to a tall cream yellow southern plant.  The upright deep yellow flowers, dwarf stature and stiff 3 veined leaves may be an adaptation to a dry, windy open habitat.  The problem lies with Carl Linneus.  I have often wondered if he really believed all plants were God created ( almost certainly he did not ) and whether he had any understanding that plants might gradually adapt to changing habitats and climate even if he had no inkling of the genetic mechanisms.  It would be much better to recognise super species above the level of genera.This can be seen in the M. horridula group ( 8 or 9 species and growing ).  The integrifolia group are like this, so too M. grandis perhaps and some of the evergreen monocarpics. Others like the red M. punicea are very distinct though there is variation in growth and flowering of even these that differs between collecting sites.

News - Spring 2011

Three new developments. Paul Egan has described 2 new species from Nepal. Meconopsis autumnalis and M. manasluensis ( Papaveraceae ) two new species of Himalayan poppies endemic to Central Nepal with sympatric congeners.

The link is http://www.mapress.com/phytotaxa/content/2011/f/pt00020p056.pdf

Details and images in time on the New Species Pages. Good colour illustrations in the paper.

Yoshida, Sun and Boufford have descibed 2 new species from the Mianning Xian region of Sichuan. These are Meconopsis pulchella, a relative of M. impedita and differing in a number of characteristics and M. heterandera which is very similar to M. rudis and M. racemosa but differs in having unique inflated and inwardly curved inner filamants that are inwardly curved. This is different from the unique filaments in M. henricii and M. sinomaculata. These are well illustrated in the paper which is available online in Acta Botanica Yunnanica 2010 32(6) 503 - 507.  There are good colour illustrations

Finally Chris Grey-Wilson ( and a good general cultural section for all big blue poppies with John Mitchell of the RBGE ) has written in SIBBALDIA 8 ( available on-line ) an account Meconopsis Grandis - The True Himalayan Blue Poppy. This splits M. grandis into 3 new sub-species, M.g. orientalis ( N and NE ( Bhutan,  NW Arunachal Pradesh and in the Cho La and Po La in Tibet )) This is the one we are most familiar with in gardens and includes L and S 600 and Betty's Dream Poppy, M. g. grandis East Nepal - Barun Khola and S and E of Everest as well as the Jongri region of Sikkim. M. g. jumlaensis is a small plant - well isolated from the other subspecies in west Nepal at Ghurchi Lagna in Jumla. These will be added in time to the Meconopsis grandis page but the paper is very well illustrated with good colour images.

News - March 2010

Dr. Chris Grey-Wilson recently talked to the Meconopsis Group at the Royal Botanic gardens at Edinburgh. Dr Grey-Wilson is currently researching and writing a new monograph on the genus. He talked particularly about the group of species related to M. horridula. and described them as an aggregate of species still actively evolving. There are a number of quite clear cut species but many plants that do not fit in. Quite certainly what we grow as M. horridula in gardens is not that species but something much nearer the Chinese species M.pratti though it is clear that it will be called M.horridula by seed merchants and seed lists as that species for some time. The only other species that does grow relatively easily in cultivation is M. rudis - another Chinese species. I will gradually amend this site to take account of the way this story is unfolding. If you want to read further on this, then I shall use the page on this site of M. horridula to expand this.

News - January 2010

I tend to add pictures as the species are submitted to me.  I am not familiar with a number of species and so far have not used herbarium specimens.  Margaret Thorne submitted pictures which we decided were M. sinuata, however, Margaret now thinks these are related to M. lyrata and I tend to agree.  She has consulted the herbarium at RBG Edinburgh on this little known species and this rather confirms the new diagnosis.  The last picture on the M. sinuata page is from Martin Walsh and this does seem to be the genuine thing.  These pages have now been changed.

New Species

The latest Alpine Garden Society Bulletin Vol 77 no. 2 June 2009 has an article by Chris Grey-Wilson re-instating Meconopsis baileyi for the Tibetan form and leaving M. betonicifolia to describe the Chinese species from Yunnan - which was described first. I think most gardeners with a sense of taxonomy would happily accept when confronted by these two species that they were simply consistent variations as occur in many other single Meconopsis species. Grey-Wilson lists 9 differences between the two new species; most of these are on size of various parts. There is some overlap in leaf characteristics but in the seed pod and associated structures where Grey-Wilson describes clear differences these are not clear cut in the Tibetan form so common in gardens and this was the basic conclusion of George Taylor who did see this species in the wild  The Chinese ( M. betonicifolia ) form is apparently readily propagated because it is stoloniferous. Sometimes we forget that the Chinese and Tibetans have a long and sophisticated history and Meconopsis had value both as sources of oil as well as having rather ill-defined medicinal value. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that a good easily propagated plant of value might have been artificially moved and certainly some explanation is required for the disjunct populations. The one feature that is much more critical is that Grey-Wilson says that in Alaska, where both forms are grown together, they do not set seed if cross-fertilised. If this is so then separate species is probably reasonable. However, Meconopsis in cultivation do not always reliably set seed due to factors that are not always clear but of which temperature may be critical. I have had plantings of M. grandis in Caithness for many years and it is only rarely that some forms set viable seed. Last year there was a good set particularly from the KEKE form and the so-called Sikkim form. These plants are immediately adjacent and yet they appear not to cross-pollinate.

New Image - By David Rankin

David Rankin, recently returned for Yunnan, and found M. violacea in the Wu Meng Shan.  Previously, this species was described from Northern Burma ( Myanmar ) by Kingdom - Ward in 1926.  This is a completely new location.  Was in cultivation, but lost many years ago.  Beautiful images of a superb plant.  Also from the same area by the same exploring group M. wumungensis photographed in colour for the first time by a western photographer, Pam Eveleigh ( of Primula World fame ).  Note : It is becoming increasingly clear that M. wilsonii is probably conspecific with M. violacea.  I am very grateful to Professor David Rankin and Paul Egan for lots of helpful comments and advice as well as extensive images.  There are more details under the two species but the website will be udpated as things become more clear.

Google Maps - Meconopsis

Google Map Data has now been developed and integrated within the site.  These maps will be gradually added for all species as I learn how to do it - the biggest difficulty is finding exactly where one is on maps of these remote regions.

There is potential to put sites on with GPS Data but this will need doing with care.  I have recently been reading Peter Coxs' and Peter Hutchinsons' splendid book ' Seeds Of Adventure ' - full of wonderful pictures and fascinating accounts of many adventures in the Himalayas and China.  They comment that they think some Meconopsis may be getting scarcer.  I have only been to China once and saw a number of species but even monocarpic species like M. lancifolia needed searching for and M. pseudointegrifolia was often just a very few plants.  Species like M. punicea and M. integrifolia in Sichuan clearly do occur in huge numbers as does the high altitude M. horridula on large tracts of the Himalayas.  Many other species are very localised however.  It may be that many populations are relics from past ice ages where presumably plants in much of the area simply went down hill in the cold.  An interesting species which makes on think is M. sherriffi.  This is a localised plant in Bhutan but there is a photograph in Eiko Chibas' lovely book of plant portraits ' Where The Blue Poppies Bloom ' which always fascinated me and she has confirmed it was taken on a pass near Kanging, Sichuan.  Perhaps there are sites in between ( Joseph Rock found a pink M. integrifolia somewhere ), perhaps it is naturally a scarce plant but maybe it has been over collected in the past for herbal use.

China has a large and significant botanical professionalism and an impressive attitude to conservation but there, as in the West, there will be strong political and monetary pressures for scientific conservation to stand up against.  Hopefully in all the countries with Meconopsis, commercial use of the plants for medicine ( or possible oils in the case of Meconopsis ) will fade away as Western medicine can be afforded or else where plants are valuable for these reasons they will be cultivated rather than harvested from the wild.  What this is saying is that publishing very detailed descriptions of where plants are is probably not sensible.

We who love to have the precious plants to adorn our gardens will have to make much more effort to understand how to maintain them in cultivation and which parts of the world this is most likely to be successful, especially with the monocarpic species that need to be renewed from seed and must be grown in isolation to stop hybridisation.  Where seed may be legitimately and legally collected in the wild, it would be well to collect a very few seed pods and scatter the vast bulk of the seeds around the parent plant.  Even where there are many plants and they are being collected professionally, a good proportion of seed should be scattered.  A little Meconopsis seed goes a long way since germination should be very high.  I am shaken how poor germination often is with seed from exchanges.  I am sure the main reason is seed collected before it is ripe.  Capsules need to be opened naturally and be shedding seed and this takes weeks after the flowers have gone.  Seeds need to be stored cool ( below 10C ) and dry.  It is well to remember that most commercial seed collected in 2009 will not be in packets for sale until 2011 - which explains a lot.  There are exceptions to ease of germination - M. quintuplinervia is a pig to germinate ( and needs better understanding ) and M. punicea needs sowing as soon as ripe ( it will germinate the following spring ) and there may be others.