Habitat: cool, part shade, not too dry
Soil: rich, with lots of humus
Height: 1 m
Flowering: early summer
Width: 50 cm
The famous blue poppies include three species, some hybrids, and not all blue! The plants we offer should all be perennial (so long as they are not allowed to flower in their first year), slowly increasing to form clumps. From the winter buds at ground level emerge hairy leaves, longer and more pointed in Meconopsis grandis than in M. betonicifolia. The tall stems, each carrying many large poppy flowers, grow rapidly, to start blooming usually in early June, with the show lasting well over a month.
Meconopsis baileyi var. alba is a white-flowered strain, which we have had for many years, reliably perennial.
2 litre pot £8.50
| Meconopsis 'Ascreavie' is a member of the George Sherriff Group of blue Meconopsis and was named after the house to which he retired after many years in political service. It is a perennial blue-flowered poppy with distinctive propeller-shaped petals. | |
| Meconopsis baileyi (was betonicifolia) is a good blue form, and includes offspring from plants raised from seed collected on the Doshong La in Tibet a few years ago. | |
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| Meconopsis 'Huntfield' is an excellent variety in the George Sherriff group, flowering just a little later than most of the blue poppies, and with a hint of purple shading the rich blue flowers. It was a major feature of our display at Chelsea in 2011, and was keenly sought after by those who saw it. | |
| Meconopsis 'Keillour' (George Sherriff Group) is a member of the group of blue Meconopsis that claimed to be the famed GS600. It has now been agreed that no living plants can be shown to be that specific collection, so the name George Sherriff Group has been applied to them all, and individual names have been given to distinctive and worthy clones. This one has been growing at Keillour Castle in Perthshire for many, many years, and has very recently been given its clonal name. It is extremely vigorous, each crown soon becoming a great clump, and it has large flowers, rich, deep blue on opening, perhaps a little paler afterwards. Magnificent! | |
| Meconopsis 'Lingholm' (Fertile Blue Group) is one of the strains of blue-flowered hybrids with fertile seed and producing perennial plants. Most cultivated plants called Meconopsis grandis (except those recently introduced from Sikkim) and Meconopsis x sheldonii should now go under this name. It has distinctive rusty brown hairs on the stems and new leaves, and the seed pods are long and narrow, like those of Meconopsis grandis, and unlike the fat ones of Meconopsis betonicifolia. | |
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| Meconopsis x sarsonsii is a hybrid of Meconopsis baileyi and M. integrifolia, which looks quite like baileyi, but has pale creamy yellow flowers, which is typical for a cross between species with blue flowers and those with yellow flowers. It is perennial, so long as it doesn't flower in its first year. | |
| Meconopsis 'Slieve Donard' is probably the finest blue poppy, as recognised by the award of a First Class Certificate. A good perennial (and producing no seed, so always propagated by division), it sends up stems with large, intense sky blue flowers. It is vigorous, and a single plant can soon produce a large clump, if it is well fed. |