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.