Meeting on 8th March 2008

There was an excellent attendance for this very enjoyable meeting. The annual general meeting was followed by talks on a variety of topics, together with the clearly welcome opportunity to talk to fellow members over a picnic lunch and to buy plants from the plant stall.

The main speaker was Dr Chris Grey-Wilson who gave two fine taxonomic talks: on the M. grandis and M. betonicifolia group of plants, and, once again, on the complex and taxonomically difficult "small blue poppies". Chris took advantage of the benefits of power-point to illustrate the talks with numerous excellent pictures, giving credit to the many people, in particular Toshio Yoshida, who have provided him with digital images.

In Jim Jermyn's talk which followed, the emphasis was on the delights and challenges of growing Meconopsis in the garden. This complemented Chris Grey-Wilson's taxonomic talks very nicely.

Professor Adam Curtis gave an update on "Can we use molecular biology to sort out the identities of the big perennial blue poppy cultivars?" Adam reported that he has now developed the necessary techniques and he indicated that with a lot more material (pollen from 10 flowers for each sample is needed) to work with this summer, he is hopeful that he will be able to obtain definitive data.

In the final short talk, Dr. James Cobb spoke of his intention to start an archive of digital images of Meconopsis in the wild. This would be made available on a website to allow widespread access. By making use of digital photography such an archive should facilitate our understanding of the taxonomy of the genus. James asked that plant-hunters willing to help should take pictures with as much taxonomic detail as possible in mind, and also should make detailed field notes.

Full reports of the talks will be sent to all members and posted on the member's area of the website in due course.

Next meeting on 15th November 2008

The next meeting of the Group will be on Saturday 15th November 2008 (not November 8th as previously announced) in the Conference Room at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. The speakers will include Mike Hirst discussing the Meconopsis he has seen on several plant-hunting trips to Nepal and China, Kevin Ball, Head Gardener at Inverewe Garden, on the development of a National Collection of Meconopsis in the garden and Professor David Rankin on electron microscopic studies of Meconopsis seeds. Further details will be announced later.

Past news items
We are planning to add a new "miscellany" page which will incorporate past news items and the topics in the current forum page. The forum has been little used and will be discontinued in its present form.

Members Area and Archive
Access to the Members Area is restricted to members only and requires a valid username and password. Current members have been notified of their individual username and password but If these have been lost, please contact the secretary@meconopsis.org.

To login, please click Members Area.

If you are not a member, but would like to join, please see Contact, Membership for details.

The Members Area has been introduced primarily to make available, to both long-standing and more recent members, the archives of The Meconopsis Group. By this means members will have access to all the past talks given at the meetings. It will also enable members to trace the way in which the Group was formed and the ways in which the various conclusions have been reached and decisions made.

Meconopsis-rich Gardens
For a directory of gardens in which a variety of Meconopsis are growing, please consult the supplementary page Meconopsis-rich Gardens. Most of these gardens are open to the public and two are in Canada.