Friday 13 January 2006

Hybrids - Garden / Wild

 
M X Harleyana
This is the best known wild hybrid. It was first created as a garden plant by Andrew Harley before the second world war. Taylor suspected, rightly, that this was the same plant as Kingdom Ward's plant from the Temo La in Tibet which he had called the Ivory Poppy. He found this in 1924 - in fact the year before Harley flowered the same cross in his garden at Devonhall. This was a hybrid and so it proved to be between M. integrifolia and M. simplicifolia. Recently found again in the Rong Chu and this image is from Fred Hunt of Invergowrie. It resembles a cream coloured M. simplicifolia. Note that since M. integrifolia was split up, the yellow parent would be M.pseudointegrifolia.
M. X beamishii
Always suspect a hybrid when there is a cream coloured flower. This is the cross between M. integrifolia and M. grandis. M. integrifolia * is a parent of a number of hybrids with blue poppies of all sorts. See' hybrids' in main section.
* Note it is not always clear whether M. integrifolia or M. pseudointegrifolia were used in many crosses not the least because the split is relatively recent.
   
M X. Cookei
These are basically hybrids between M. quintuplinervia and M. punicea. This has been made many times since the first cross by Randal Cooke and now includes mutiple backcrosses that resemble M. punicea but are reliably perennial and have individual clonal names.
M. X Sheldonii Slieve Donard
Perhaps the most beautiful of all the blue hybrids, the vast majority of which are hybrids between M. betonicifolia and M grandis. Many of these have been collected by Evelyn Stevens who grows them on the Ochil Hills above Dunblane. They are detailed on the website of the Meconopsis Group.