APPENDIX. 



Meconopsis. — I do not know the authority or diagnosis of M. Wardii, but 

 the two following Poppies are both clearly new since Fedde's monograph in 

 the Pflanzenreich, and I cherish hope accordingly that one certainly, and both 

 probably, may prove to be distinct new species. Both are biennial, both belong 

 to the Primulina Group, both stand at the Delavayi-end of that group, and 

 both appear to be of very limited range. 



Meconopsis Sp. (F 123) [M. lepida, Sp. nova) inhabits the upper alpine 

 banks and ledges on Thundercrown, markedly preferring the cooler westerly 

 aspects. It is not found in the open turf, but often occurs at its fringes round 

 the base and up the gullies of little limestone outcrops in the huge grassy flanks 

 of the mountain at 12,500 feet, not steadily abounding, but appearing in sporadic 

 outbursts. It is a most lovely little biennial of some 4 to 8 inches, with 

 all the narrow, rather glaucous foliage at the base, and the naked stem carrying 

 from 1 to 6 large flowers, made up of some 6 to 11 rhomboidal petals of 

 lavender purple silk, arranged in a whirling catherine-wheel round the creamy 

 crowded boss of stamens. These flaunt their frail and filmy loveliness in June ; 

 unfortunately by the end of August the seed was so unanimously fallen that 

 barely enough could be collected for distribution in even the smallest quantities. 

 However, it should germinate well, and must then be copiously raised again ; 

 nothing more daintily beautiful exists in the race, as you see its great whirling 

 heads poised delicately amid the fine grasses, the golden Gageas and Fritillaries, 

 the innumerable purple Irids that enamel the grassy rocky ribs of Thundercrown. 

 (The Dainty Poppy.) 



Meconopsis integrifolia (F 92) is very magnificent and portly in the 

 highest turf of Thundercrown, standing stiffly up in early June with its huge 

 lemon-pale globes in sumptuous but rather graceless and gawky candelabra of 

 colour. Here, as I say, it loves the long high-alpine hay at some 12,000 to 

 13,000 feet, and is found in no other situation but over all the open flanks of 

 the grassy slopes, where its bloom is at its height before the herbage is well 

 up, while still the Alps are sere and brown. No meadow, however, is too coarse 

 for it ; and, at its lower limit, at some 7500 to 8000 feet, it luxuriates amid the 

 coarsest tangle of tall Asters and Berberids, the Asters, in September, enclosing 

 the huge upstanding pods of the Poppy in a lush jungle of leafage and blossom. 

 (The Lampshade Poppy.) 



Meconopsis quintuplinervia (F 118) has already been figured in the 

 icle from an in situ photograph on Thundercrown. It is indeed a gracious 

 and lovely thing, with its single bell-shaped flowers of softest lavender-blue 

 swinging high upon their bare stems above the group of pale-haired, greyish 

 foliage crowded in the turf below. The supremely important point about 

 M. quintuplinervia, however, is that it is undoubtedly perennial, and thus forms 

 a grand addition to the garden, where there is as yet no perennial Meconopsis 

 and M . < This beautiful treasure inhabits the finer 



(as a rule) alpine turf of Kansu-Tibet border, between 9000 and 13,000 feet. We 

 first met it, still dormant, amid the snows on Chago-ling ; on Thundercrown 

 and all up the ZM in B'an it abounds, as also, in amazing profusion, in the 



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