Buy dried flowers, dried poppies & poppy seeds.

Himalayan blue poppies

The Himalayan blue poppies belong to the Meconopsis genus. This genus is conformed of about 50 species of annual, biennials, and short lived perennials known yet. All of the species except one, are native to the Himalayas and western China. This doesn’t mean they can’t grow anywhere else in the world, basically they grow in the Northern Hemisphere because of the climate. The plants belonging to the Meconopsis genus, all of them, are often called Himalayan blue poppies which can be misleading because not of all of them are blue and not all of them are of the Himalayas. The flowers can be represented in one of this 3 main colors: blue, yellow and red. However there are some rare ones that come in white.

As I mentioned the Meconopsis genus is misleadingly called Himalayan blue poppies, it is wrong, but there is a reason for it. “Himalayan blue poppies” is the name in English given to the Meconopsis genus because there is no common name that satisfies it. Another reason is that most of the species and hybrids of the genus are in fact blue and they are the most liked and propagated ones across the world.

Himalayan blue poppies.- They are also called the “big perennial blue Himalayan poppies”. There are 3 kinds known yet and many hybrids. So there is no exact number of how many exist. This type of plants are perennial if they have a cool, rainy summer and well drained and mulched soil. If they don’t have this growing conditions they only live one year (or become monocarpic as it is called).

Kinds of Himalayan blue poppies:

- Meconopsis Betonicifolia or Baileyi grows about 3 to 5 feet high and gets stems with 4 to 5 flowers each. It was discovered in north-west Yunnan in 1886 and it’s probably the most popular and widely grown member. This plant sets a lot of seeds.

- Meconopsis simplicifolia was discovered around 1848. It was the first one to be discovered. This species doesn’t get as much attention as the other 2. It is said that it is not being cultivated for ill-understood reasons.

- Meconopsis Grandis or Tibetan Blue Poppy gets up to 2 feet high and it’s stems also have 4 to 5 flowers and their larger and cupped than the Betonicifolia ones. It was discovered around the 1880’s in east Nepal. It is the national flower of Bhutan.

Here are some of the hybrids (the best knon ones): M. x Sheldonii “Bobby Masterton”, M. Lingholm, M. x Sheldonii “Jimmy Bayne”, M. Fertile Blue Group (not yet named), M. x Sheldonii “Slieve Donard”, M. x Sheldonii “Mrs. Jebb”, M. x Sheldonii “Crwedson Hybrid”, M. Barney’s Blue (this flower opens pink, lightens in colour and then changes to blue). As you may have noticed all the hybrids are called M. x Sheldoni because that’s the name given to the cross between M Betonicifolia and M. Grandis.