Really only just practising again but there is a message with this image. I was sowing seed of this today from my own collecting. Nomocharis are the most beautiful of all the bulbs I have. They run from deep pink to white with a wide range of spotting from none to very heavily spotted. There are about 6 species. This sort of seed is not easy to come by and even with seed exchanges you might well only get 2 or 3 seeds, so establishing your own plants, preferably with a small colony to ensure cross pollination and fertile seed, is vital in the long term. Such a population also gives you rare and desirable seed to exchange. I sow a modest potful in my standard way but I also line out a row in a part of the garden where they can be protected both up to germination and as seedlings. I grow both on unthinned for two or three years until there are reasonably sized bulbs to transplant to the garden or individually pot up, say two bulbs, as gifts. I use the same technique with all my lilies. Renewing from seed of even common species is desirable to avoid the build up of virus

It is probably obvious to everyone but me but this site not only presents posts on my blog but also has the whole of the original Meconopsis World website. 'VIEW BLOG' gives you both. I shall probably not add material to the old website again but add everything including new species - if they are found or split from current ones on the BLOG part. 

Nothing to do with Meconopsis but in this dreary winter something that flowers is a great gift. This used to be called Iris unguicularis but is now known as Iris stylosa. After last years hot summer they have flowered wonderfully from late November. They are a really large flower with long stems and travel well in the post as cut flowers to my family. A good creamy white form does well for me. There is a wonderful large flowered variety called Walter Butt (shown) and, a dark blue and a very dark blue that I have seen described as a different species - Iris lazica. To me the last is just a really nice dark blue. Here in Scotland they need it hot in summer and are planted against a south facing wall. I have never seen any sign that they are not hardy but the biggest problems is slugs and particularly snails. They need constant slug pellets worked in among the thick clumps of leaves. I should add at this point that I am not very competent with computers and have had trouble lately with this programme. Yesterday an extremely good professional computer expert who devised and set up the website and Blog sorted out all my problems - and long may this last!

                                    MECONOPSIS LUDLOWII

These four pictures were taken by Margaret and David Thorne in Arunachal Pradesh last summer. Clearly a very lovely dwarf plant with deep blue stamens and what looks like a yellow stigma but maybe the stigma is coloured and it is covered with yellow pollen. There is a very distintive leaf. This is some ways a mysterious plant and found by earlier European explorers but was first properly recorded  by the great team of Ludlow and Sherriff  on the ORKA LA on 10th June 1934 and also later on the MILAKATONG LA and elsewhere. Seed was collected as Meconopsis lancifolia concinna.   Currently Dr. Grey-Wilson is going to describe it as a new species called Meconopsis ludlowii

All this information has been passed to me by David and Margaret Thorne and any mistakes are mine. 

Rather unusual foliage  with seemingly two leaf types with later leaves partially pinnate.

Clearly a highly desirable plant if ever seed could  be collected

Another picture from the same talented grower in Russia and this time seedlings of Meconopsis betonicifolia. The seed was from the form  Hensol Violet. This batch of her seed was from a Swedish source and  it shows how great the genetic diversity that there is in cultivated stains of this species now.

These are some lovely images from Russia. A quite superb form of what I still call Meconopsis betonicifolia rather than the new name for M. baileyii - and anyway these were grown from seed sent as Hensol Violet from Sweden. They are grown in the garden of a clearly very accomplished plant grower in St-Petersbourg  in Russia - Svetlana Voronina - who has large collections of many plants. She gardens near a forested area so there is shade and wind protection and the area is normally quite wet. 

David and Margaret Thorn returned to Arunachal Pradesh this year and have brought back some more beautiful images particularly of Meconopsis grandis shown here. I shall add more of these images later in the new year. What is particularly interesting is that they were taken  near the site in Bhutan that the famous Ludlow and Sherriff expedition found L and S 600 - perhaps the best known Meconopsis of all time. I am very grateful to them for sharing these wonderful pictures