Scottish Rock Garden Club Forum
Specific Families and Genera => Meconopsis => Topic started by: Magnar on July 15, 2008, 12:40:23 PM
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Just discovered this one flowering in my garden. Never saw a white M. horridula before.
(http://magnar.aspaker.no/Meconopsis%20horridula%20alba%2008.jpg)
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Magnar
Did this arise spontaneously?
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Magnar,
There was a white horridula going about a few years ago but I never remember seeing any as good as yours, they tended to have rather small flowers, Yours is worth trying to get a good strain from. It might be worth pulling out any blue ones near by.
Susan
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I don't have other horridulas but this one flowering this year.
I was outside checking, and it seems this is plant was given to me as seedling last year. It is labelled M. forrestii, but to me looks like a horridula. Now does anybody here know what a M. forrestii should look like?
I will certainly collect seeds of this one. :)
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Magnar,I think M. forrestii may be a sysnonym of M. horridula :-X ??? :-\
See this page for a photo from Branklyn Gardens which was labelled as M. forrestii........
http://www.srgc.org.uk/smf/index.php?topic=519.0
Also this photo : http://photobucket.com/image/meconopsis/Gentianagirl/Sommeren2007003-1.jpg?o=9
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Also, see this old forum page for comment from hannelotte about a plant she had grown as forrestii, she thought.....
http://www.srgc.org.uk/discus/messages/36/8843.html
Whatever your white plant may be, it is certainly most unusual and lovely.
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Thank you, Maggi
I grew this plant http://magnar.aspaker.no/Meconopsis%20forrestii.jpg as M. forrestii a few years ago, and it sure was monocarpic. So I will make sure to collect seeds of this white one.
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It's a stunning plant Magnar ! Beautiful ! :o
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It is labelled M. forrestii, but to me looks like a horridula. Now does anybody here know what a M. forrestii should look like?
If it came from me then I'm sorry for the misidentification, only realized last winter that my plants were misidentified horridulas (or pratti/racemosa/whatever the taxonomists fancy at the moment). M. forrestii is supposedly very close to M. lancifolia, with distinct seed pods having a very short to absent style. See the FoC treatment (http://hua.huh.harvard.edu/china/mss/volume07/Papaveraceae-K_final.htm).
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Friends, I have had this comment from James Cobb:
" White horridula has been about for 30 years, currently I have lost it but I had selected a wonderful squat large flowered form and sent out much seed so I guess it is still about. Actually however carefully you select for form in Mecs they tend to defeat you. M forrestii is a distinct species (according to Grey Wilson anyway) It is a racemose blue flowered plant (i.e. just like M horridula_) but has a narrow seed capsule."
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Thanks for the info Maggi :)
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Hello. This is my first time here.
I was trekking in North Sikkim in the Himalayas and discovered this plant.
There was only this plant in the whole region.
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Hi Basant..
Welcome to the Forum.
I think your white Meconopsis may be M. paniculata alba.
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Basant Welcome to the forum and congratulation to have seen this one.
Looks like it was a wet trekk as seen from the drops on the flower. (A very nice effect I think) I hope You had a great trekk.
Kind regards
Joakim
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Thank you Joakim,
It rained most of the time during the trek but we were prepared for it and we managed to see more then 50 different high altitude Alpine flowers. It was a natural paradise.
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Welcome to this wonderful forum Basant,
Please feel free to post more images of your exciting trek.
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I've just been reading an article written in 1915 by David Prain (who also like myself took up botany at the University of Aberdeen :) ), entitled "Some additional species of Meconopsis". I straight away thought of this post about white M. horridula, because in the article Prain describes a new species of white flowered thorny Meconopsis, which he called M. decora, from the east Himalayas:
"This seed is said to have come from the Abor Country, and Mr. Hay on raising plants had supposed them to belong to M. aculeata; when flowers appeared he took the form to be a white-flowered variety of that species. It is, however, in reality so distinct that it is advisable to treat it as the type of a separate group."
There's not a great difference between all the species of the horridula aggregate (and many in cultivation are mis-named), so yeah, the plant we're looking it could also just be a white variety of any of them.
As for the fate of Meconopsis decora, its species level classification was whisked away by Taylor, who assigned it the status of a hybrid. Though interestingly Taylor also admited he couldn't explain how these 'hybrids' could arise spontaneously in gardens and in the wild. ???
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Unless I’m mistaken, that magnificent picture posted by Basant on this topic two years ago is Meconopsis superba. It is recorded as occurring in West Bhutan, Chumbi valley and perhaps elsewhere in Tibet, but as far as I know, never before in Sikkim. What a tremendous find!
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Perhaps not, the leaves aren't right. What do other folk think?
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Strictly speaking this is M. prattii alba (using Chris Grey-Wilsons new classification) The white form of this as M. horridula alba has been around for 40 years in cultivation. There used to be a big planting in Bob Mitchell's (Curator) own garden at the St. Andrews Botanic gardens. It turns up very so often in cultivated seed and I still have the odd plant. Like the blue form it is variable in form and yours is nice. Seed will produce mostly blues but if you can make the effort, hand pollinate white flowered plants. As far as I am aware only M superba is self ferile so you will need to cross pollinate between two different white plants. James Cobb
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Meconopsis prattii alba
i saw a white form in a bed of Meconopsis prattii (or horridula) at the Cruickshank Botanic Garden a few years ago. I got some seed from them but did not get a white one the first year. I sowed seed from a good deep blue form and this white one appeared this year. I did not plant any last year so do not know if it is one which took two years to flower or if it is a self sown seedling.