Meconopsis 2023

[partisangardener]

The heatwave last summer here was supposedly bad for growing Meconopsis. Even more than 40 C° and several weeks in the high 30ties.
I had sown some seeds of Meconopsis X Sheldonii late winter in 2022.
I wanted to overcome the obstacles this beautiful flower offers in my climate. I did not expect that my experiment would be successful.
https://www.srgc.org.uk/forum/index.php?topic=18726.0

My floating islands with a living soil overcame the obstacles.
On one island with the right setting two specimens grew exceptionally good. Wet wintering should be another obstruction.
Yesterday I saw this.

[partisangardener]

Do they always get dormant in winter?
Very small ones did, but one just kept his leafs through the frost. This one was transplanted during the summer on my island with most development. It caught up a bit, but did not form a winter-bud.

[partisangardener]

This one was even smaller than the one which did not want to get dormant. I thought it is gone but is has turned up again out of a very tiny resting bud.

[partisangardener]

Spring turned up with regular frost periods. Probably the wet conditions in combination with the first growth of leafs turned out to be critical.
One plant lost its heart, the other one pulled through.
So I decided to get them some more substrate under the feet. I pushed one hand under the substrate just above the fleece. Into this hole I' shoved some extra substrate. So the plants are situated 5 cm higher above the fleece.
We will see how they fare,

[Leena]

My Meconopsis are not flowering so well this year. Many plants have lots of leaves but no flower stalks, even plants which had flowered well previously. My biggest FBG plant grew a long flower stalk with no bud in the top. Luckily sidebuds are now flowering. I was wondering what has caused this? We had very cold nights in May, many times -4 - -6C night frosts, and could it have been the reason? Also when there was no flower stalk at all, only leaves like in the last picture, is this because something was wrong in last summer? And new flower buds didn't develop..
I was just thinking what I should do this year to get more flowers next summer.

[Leena]

Still, there were some flowers, here are pictures from today and yesterday.

[Véronique Macrelle]

I'd love to go for a walk in your garden, Leena...
it's really the kind of garden I like, I think I'd spend hours looking at every plant.
We're already very lucky that, in a way, the internet shortens distances...


my young meconopsis sown this winter have a 20cm basal rosette, all hairy. i hope to have something similar next year.

[Leena]

I'm so happy to hear the seedlings are growing well for you.
About my garden, you know pictures are only half the truth and I try to angle for the best view, and leave all weeds out of the picture.
But I love it.

[MarcR]

Leena,

Weeds need to be dealt with; but, they are irrelevant.  If your garden brings you joy and/or meets another need in your life, then, it is exactly what it should be.
It can be improved on; but, it is still what it should be!

[Leena]

In spite of dry early summer Meconopsis plants appreciated the very wet August (246mm rain!) and older plants have now grown huge leaves. I'm hoping for a very good flowering next year.
In the third picture there are seedlings from seed ex 2022, M.grandis aff purple.
The last picture is something I was wondering. There are two plants side by side, both grown FBG seeds are they are going to flower next year for the first time (hopefully), but foliage is different colour. The left one has much bluer foliage than the one on the right side. What do you think?

[Leena]

I have grown Meconopsis 'Wysiwyg', pink perennial, from seed ex. Can anyone tell me more about it? It looks M.bayleyi-like, but is it a hybrid?
From those seeds I got some baileyi-type, light blue.  Then this summer one fine plant with pinkish flowers flowered for the first time and it was good.
In the last picture the bluer one on the right is Jim's ex.

[Leena]

Then from the same seeds there were some which were more purplish blue, but the flowers were distorted, and I put them in compost bin this summer, because the flowers were no good also the second year they flowered.

[Margaret Thorne]

I have grown Meconopsis 'Wysiwyg', pink perennial, from seed ex. Can anyone tell me more about it? It looks M.bayleyi-like, but is it a hybrid?
From those seeds I got some baileyi-type, light blue.  Then this summer one fine plant with pinkish flowers flowered for the first time and it was good.
In the last picture the bluer one on the right is Jim's ex.

'WYSIWYG' stands for 'what you see is what you get', so yours was presumably seed collected from a pink flowered M. baileyi which could have been pollinated by any other Mec species in the donor's garden. I think the label is more often applied to evergreen monocarpics grown together and left to hybridise, in which case they are more correctly described as M x complexa.

[Leena]

'WYSIWYG' stands for 'what you see is what you get', so yours was presumably seed collected from a pink flowered M. baileyi which could have been pollinated by any other Mec species in the donor's garden. I think the label is more often applied to evergreen monocarpics grown together and left to hybridise, in which case they are more correctly described as M x complexa.

Margaret, thank you. 
I think I will discard all of them, so that they won't hybridize with the better ones I have.

[Leena]

What a nice surprise was in the mailbox today, new seeds to play with. Thank you so much!