Thursday 6 June 2013

There are many named varieties of the big blue poppies - many sterile hybrids and some fertile. This plant, which I still grow, was photographed in the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens. I used to call it Miss Jebbs but I was later corrected and it should be Mrs Jebbs who lived at Crocketford south of Edinburgh. It probably is a x Sheldonii hybrid (i.e. between M. betonicifolia and M. grandis) but is distinctive in having smaller cup shaped flowers and a dwarfer habitat. Suspect these are looking a little sorry for themselves after the long cold spring this year in Scotland with many plants, even as I write, still nearly a month late flowering.