(D. Don) Walp.
Description
Meconopsis simplicifolia (D. Don) Walp. is a high-mountain perennial blue poppy of the central and eastern Himalaya, ranging through Nepal, Sikkim and northern India, Bhutan and southern Tibet (China), with cultivated records accounting for the United Kingdom entries in a GBIF dataset of roughly 267 occurrences. It inhabits alpine meadows, open turf, rocky slopes and the margins of Rhododendron scrub on moist, humus-rich, well-drained acidic soils, typically within the snowmelt-fed alpine zone. The illustrated collections cluster between about 3200 and 3900 m, from Tanghu in Sikkim at 3900 m and Chele-La in Bhutan at 3200 m in June to Yumthang on the Sikkim-India border at 3600 m in May, marking a late-spring to early-summer flowering as the snow retreats.
It forms a perennial herb with a basal rosette of simple, undivided leaves, oblanceolate to elliptic or narrowly lanceolate, entire to faintly toothed and clothed in soft, often fulvous to fawn-coloured bristly hairs, narrowing to a winged petiole; the simple, unlobed foliage gives the species its epithet. From the rosette arise one or several slender, bristly, leafless scapes, each bearing a solitary, nodding flower. The flowers have four (sometimes more) broad, silky, overlapping petals of clear sky-blue to violet or, in some forms, reddish-purple, surrounding a tuft of golden stamens and a stout ovary topped by a short, distinct style and capitate stigma. The fruit is an ellipsoid, bristly capsule opening by short apical valves.
Meconopsis simplicifolia is part of the perennial, scapose blue-poppy assemblage and is distinguished from allies such as M. grandis by its single-flowered scapes and entirely simple leaves; it is variable in flower colour and in whether it behaves as monocarpic or polycarpic. Pollinated chiefly by bumblebees, it is a celebrated ornamental long grown in cool temperate gardens. Across its range populations are localised and sensitive to grazing, trampling and the warming of alpine habitats, making it, like its relatives, a species of interest for Himalayan alpine conservation though not formally assessed as threatened.
Author: (D. Don) Walp. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of Bhutan, Flora of Nepal, Christopher Grey-Wilson – The Genus Meconopsis