A Review of the genera Meconopsis and Cathcartia 
BY 
D. PRAIN, C.I.E., F.R.S. 
Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens , Kew. 
With Plates XXIV and XXV. 
i. MECONOPSIS. 
History, 
HE name Meconopsis was proposed by Viguier in 1814 (Hist. Pav. 
JL Diss., 20) for the plant known familiarly in this country as the Welsh 
Poppy. By the earlier systematists this plant was sometimes treated as 
a Papaver , sometimes as an Argemone. When included in Argemone it 
will be understood that the genus intended was not the Argemone of 
modern botanical works, first clearly defined by Tournefort in 1694, but the 
pre-Tournefortian Argemone , all the species of which Tournefort relegated 
to Papaver 1 . The limitation of Papaver and Argemone which Tournefort 
advocated was substantially adopted by Linnaeus, who, in 1753 (Species 
Plantarum, ed. 1), named the Welsh Poppy Papaver cambricum. 
Viguier’s proposal, and his name Meconopsis cambrica , were adopted in 
1815 by De Candolle (Flor. Fr., ed. 3, v. 586), but in spite of this sponsorship 
a generation elapsed before either the name or the view found acceptance. 
In 1816 Desportes (Diet. Sci. Nat., ii. 481), while assenting to the removal 
of the Welsh Poppy from Papaver , did not admit the necessity for a genus 
Meconopsis , but referred the plant to Argemone , as A. cambrica. In this 
case, however, it was in the new or Tournefortian Argemone , not in 
Argemone as understood by the early writers, that Desportes placed the 
Welsh Poppy. The arrangement is not a happy one, for it obscures 
Tournefort’s Argemone without making Viguier’s Meconopsis intelligible. 
When in 1821 De Candolle dealt again with the plant (Syst. Veg., ii. 87) he 
gave no support to Desportes’ view. However, while disposing of one 
difficulty De Candolle created another, because he linked with Viguier’s 
1 For a detailed history of the change of incidence of the name Argemone , see Journal of 
Botany, xxxiii, pp. 130-2. 
[Annals of Botany, Vol. XX. No. LXXX. October, 1906.] 
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