Habitat: shaded position
Soil: with plenty of humus
Height: 120 cm
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 '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 '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. | |
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| 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 baileyi var. alba is a white-flowered strain, which we have had for many years, reliably perennial. | |
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| Meconopsis 'Bobby Masterton' is a rarely offered clone with attractive foliage in spring and intense, sky blue flowers that are very similar in appearance to 'Slieve Donard'. Such is the similarity of their flowers that they are best told apart by looking at their leaves as Meconopsis 'Bobby Masterton' mature leaves have a toothed margin, and young leaves have a red-purple pigmentation. | |
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| 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 '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. |