MECONOPSIS. 
Garhwal, Bhotan, and Nepal, where its common name is Espoo swa’. 
It has a variety, M. p. elata, passing by many intermediates back into 
the type, but sufficiently distinct in its extremer forms, by the much 
less well-furnished spires of blossom, the flowers being borne usually 
on single pedicels in simple unbranched sprays, arranged in tight 
spires. It is this form that has especially bred trouble; for it was 
figured in Flora and Sylva (1905) as M. «nipalensis,” following 
Lemaire’s Ill. Hort., iii. (1856), through M. nipalensis, Hooker, fil., and 
Thomp., dating back to Wall., Cat. (1828). M. « nepalensis” of 
gardens accordingly has no real existence at all. 
M. petiolata (DC.) = Stylophorum diphyllum (q.v.). 
M. primulina. See under M. lancifolia. 
M. pseudintegrifolia stands to M. integrifolia as does M. simplici- 
folia to M. grandis. That is, though identical in almost every other 
respect, it has no stout stem branching into two or three foot-stalks 
to its great sulphur-yellow g'obes, as in M. integrifolia ; but the same 
flowers spring straight from the stock, each lonely on a stalk of 6 or 
8 inches. This superb species, equal in flower to M. iniegrifolia, 
but so much dwarfer and more elegant in habit, is found in the high 
alpine turf about the source of the Mekong, &c. 
M. punicea is weil known by now, with its thick tufts of loase long 
oval-pointed hairy green leaves, and its abundant uprising single 
stems, at the top of each of which comes a single large flower of a royal 
crimson, so floppy and tired in texture that each blossom hangs 
on its stem like a blood-stained flag hoisted to its pole on a windless 
dull day in late autumn. This plant gives no problem of culture in 
the Meconopsis bed, but is, of course, monocarpic like all the rest 
(except where honourable exception is made, as for M. bella and 
M. grandis). See also Appendix for a better account. 
M. quintuplinervia now hovers on the fringe of cultivation, and is 
most eagerly looked for, like the Maestro Jimson’s Opera. For it is 
certain that despite its place in the group, M. quintuplinervia is 
going to prove the soundest perennial of the family; and so beauti- 
ful that the senses ache at the multitudinous loveliness of its myriad 
dancing lavender butterflies over the rolling upper Alps of the Da-Tung 
chain (Northern Kansu-Tibet), In fact, in well-bred exquisiteness 
of charm, it stands, in my eyes, supreme over its race. It forms a 
dense carpet of clumps, all clothed in stiff russet hairs, and with 
numbers of basal leaves, elliptic and acute, about 3 or 4 inches 
long. Above these spring up the bare foot-stalks of some 10 inches 
or a toot, each bearing a single nodding bell-shaped flower of pale 
purple, each with four petals. The number of these, the scantier tassel 
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