Meconopsis betonicifolia is a fabulous plants with stunning blue flowers but not easy to grow without the right conditions. The trick is to sow them cool in early spring and plant them in a shady cool damp but well drained situation. They produce a rosette of bristly leaves and then in late spring they send up a flower shoot several feet tall which produces one or more terminal flowers usually followed by further flowers lower down the stalk. The blue colour ranges from a clear pale sky blue though intense pure blue to violet shades. The rosette of foliage will remain over the summer in cool damp climates, but even in England it will become very battered and may even disappear for a while like an Oriental poppy. The flowering rosettes die as winter arrives, but strong plants will have produced offset rosettes and so will spread into a clump over the years.
