Prain
Description
Meconopsis sinuata is a blue poppy of the eastern Himalaya. GBIF records it from India, Nepal, Bhutan and China, with around 60 occurrences distributed along the moist eastern Himalayan ranges. It grows in subalpine and alpine meadows, open shrubberies, forest clearings and rocky slopes, typically between 3000 and 4300 m, in the high-rainfall belt swept by the summer monsoon. The plant figured here was photographed at Tsochenchen in Bhutan at 3500 m in June, flowering early in the season among damp alpine herbage characteristic of this genus of cool, humid mountain habitats.
It is a slender perennial or biennial poppy bearing bristly hairs throughout. The basal leaves are oblanceolate with a distinctly sinuate to lobed margin, narrowing to a winged petiole, and the cauline leaves diminish upward. The nodding flowers are borne singly on bristly pedicels in the upper axils; the four (occasionally more) delicate, crinkled petals are sky-blue to purplish-blue, sometimes mauve, surrounding a boss of numerous yellow stamens. The superior ovary bears a short style, and the fruit is an elongate, bristly capsule dehiscing by apical valves to shed many small seeds.
Meconopsis, the celebrated Himalayan blue poppies, is a centre of endemism in the eastern Himalaya and Hengduan mountains, and the group has been extensively recircumscribed by molecular work separating Asian species from the European M. cambrica. The vivid blue pigmentation, attractive to bumblebee pollinators, has also made these poppies prized in cultivation. Restricted to specialised high-rainfall alpine habitats, M. sinuata is sensitive to grazing and habitat disturbance, and several congeners are of conservation concern.
Author: Prain · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora of Bhutan, Annotated Checklist of the Flowering Plants of Nepal, The Genus Meconopsis: Blue Poppies and their Relatives