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carolm

meconopsis?

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After resisting for many years, I've fallen under the spell of the blue poppy. Went ahead and ordered some Meconopsis lingholm seeds. (Its a cross between Himalayan and Tibetan blue poppies). I have not doubt that I can get them to germinate--I did it once years ago. But never tried actually putting them out in the garden. Has anyone in SE MI attempted this? Is this folly?

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The blue Meconopsis are lovely, but are heat sensitive, being primarily high mountain plants of western China and the Himalaya. To grow, plants need to make more enegy by photosynthesis than they lose through respiration. One theory for what causes some plants to be heat sensitive is that during our warm summmer nights, plants of high elevations and latitudes will lose more enegy respiring (plants respire at night) than they gain during the preceding day of photosynthesis. If someone could figure out a way to keep plants cool at night, we might be able to manage. I have seen some of the robust and tolerant Meconopsis hybrids grown, with special care, as far south as Ottawa, Canada.

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Well, that's it then. Someone needs to engineer a mecanopsis with a reduced nightly respiration rate. In the meantime, I'll experiment with different spots in the yard too. Might even grow some as annuals, (allow them to flower the first year).

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Or else we need to do goofy things like an air conditioned dome over the meconopsis every night, or this:

post-5-0-90276400-1332343575.jpg

 

And don't laugh too hard because we know people in zone 8 who buy ice at intervals during winter and layer it plus an insulating mulch over the spot where their peonies are, in hopes of giving them enough cold hours to produce bloom!

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I remember when I first saw this plant in a magazine years ago, thought I MUST have this plant in my yard. After doing some research I decided it would be easier to take a toddler and make them stand in one place in my yard at all times than it would be to successfully grow a meconopsis!

 

I sure did enjoy the ones I saw in person at Buchart Gardens many years later though. :)

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Oh, they are gorgeous. We drooled over them when we first saw them, too, perhaps the only blue flower that doesn't ever get touched up in catalogs because it's already melt-your-heart blue. Then we met them in people's gardens in the Scottish Highlands (where, in summer if it gets above 70F people begin to undo their colors and mutter about the ungodly heat). Oh, to have those.

 

But, ah well, WE in the heat can grow tomatoes and sunflowers and peppers and such that cool weather gardeners can't!

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