Meconopsis quintuplinervia - Photos In The Garden

Clone known as Kayes' compact form.	A lovely form growing in Tromso, Norway, The fertile allotetraploid hybrid Lingholm between M. betonicifolia and M. grandis in the background. Finn Haugli.
Seed set in this species is rare since most people cultivate it as a very perennial clone. There are a number of these clones in cultivation - Kayes Compact - being one and all of them are likely to be 70 to 80 years in cultivation. It is only recently that new material has been introduced into cultivation and then I suspect a lot of this seed did not germinate. The webmaster decided that this species would behave like M. punicea and that only seed sown as soon as harvested would reliably germinate the following spring. Evelyn Stevens of Dunblane grows more than one clone and regularly obtains seed set. I could not germinate this until I treated seed like M. punicea and in 2010 produced about 30 plants. This plant was flowering in February!	Plant immediately adjacent to previous, again in February. A lot of these M. quintuplinervia seedlings flowered in autumn (and this worried the webmaster since he feared they would flower and die). However all of them are now truly multirosetted - including the one in flower and there is every hope they are going to be as reliably perennial as the old clones. A dead flower stem can be seen on this plant and typical of the species it is fully winter dormant and maybe the autumn flowering was caused by a long wet summer and autumn and a fairly mild winter until recently. The plant in flower survived - 10 C. in flower! Most that have flowered are this pale mauve but they may change when flowering as more mature plants.