MGS (Research Seed)

Research Seed (MGS#100 series)-this seed is intended only for research and hybridising purposes.

Seed from a form of a species (e.g. Meconopsis baileyi ‘Hensol Violet’) should breed true, within the range of natural variation. However, Big Blue Poppies which are hybrids (e.g. ‘Jimmy Bayne’) tend not to breed true from seed and usually produce inferior plants. True plants of Meconopsis ‘Jimmy Bayne’ can be produced only from vegetative divisions – a slow process, which explains why named clones are expensive. The same applies to named purple clones, such as Meconopsis ‘Keillour Violet’.

Until 2016 the Meconopsis Group seed exchange did not include such seed as there was the possibility that, through human error, these inferior seedlings might get passed on, mis-named as the original clone plant, which could undo years of hard work by the Meconopsis Group. At the same time it was recognised that the seed could be important for selectively breeding a superior plant, which might be of such quality as to merit being a named clone in its own right.

Please contact the seed exchange manager for further details if you have such a research project in mind.

Some plants/seeds with numbers from an earlier scheme still circulate. MGS#1 and MGS#2 are forms of Meconopsis baileyi, and MGS#3 is Meconopsis betonicifolia x baileyi. The parent plants of MGS#3 are Meconopsis ‘Alaska’, but plants raised from this seed are not identical, and should not be labelled as ‘Alaska’.