Tibetan Poppy Blues

Blue poppy..
Originally uploaded by jetbluestone

"It's worth dying after you've seen a blue poppy once."

Who doesn't like flowers? I have been wanting to write blog posts about flowers. This is my first post on the topic. I would like to post more entries on flowers, so let me know if any of you readers have information about any flowers or would like to read about any specific flower. I would like to make a collection of Tibetan names of different common flowers, for educational purposes. I think it is "cool" for Tibetans to be able to name flowers in their mother tongue.

So let's start with the Tibetan names. The coveted Blue Poppy is known to Tibetans as Utpal Ngonpo (ཨུཏྤལ་སྔོན་པོ༑), and also as Tser-Ngon Metog (ཚེར་སྔོན་མེ་ཏོག༑) as it is known in Bhutan, where it is the national flower. An Amdo Tibetan doctor once told me about this flower and I have been fascinated by it since. I also have a friend nicknamed Utpal and that added to the fascination with the beautiful name. So I got distracted this morning and started looking for information about the flower on the web.

And boy was I surprised to see all the information! There are tons of scientific papers and many books written about this "elusive" flower. There is a young Tibetan woman who is doing her PhD on Blue Poppy -- isn't that great!? Some of the books that have Blue Poppy in its title include Dreams of the Blue Poppy by Angela Lock, The Blue Poppy and the Mustard Seed: A Mother's Story of Loss and Hope by Kathleen Willis Morton, Blue Poppies by Jonathan Falla, and most notably, The Land of the Blue Poppy by Francis Kingdon Ward. I might write about Francis Kingdon Ward in another post. First, this question: if this flower is studied and grown so much in gardens around the world, what is so "elusive" about it?

There is a new book and a website specifically devoted to this flower/book, Blue Heaven: Encounters with the Blue Poppy. The site describes the flower as "the most alluring due to its sheer beauty, its perfect poise and the astonishing clarity of the blue. It is the most sought after because it is rarely seen and widely thought to be impossible to grow, listed even by as experts as a formidable challenge."

Blue Poppies belong to the genus Meconopsis, which is endemic to only two regions of the world: Western Europe (known as the Welsh Poppy) and the Himalayas (known as the Himalayan or the Tibetan Poppy). Welsh Poppies are yellow or orange in color and the Himalayan Poppies are blue. There are three species of Himalayan Poppy: Meconopsis simplicifolia (discovered around 1848 in central Nepal by Dr. Wallich's collectors); Meconopsis Betonicifolia (discovered in 1886 in the Kham region by the eccentric British officer/spy Frederick Marshman Bailey); and Meconopsis Grandis (discovered around the 1880's in east Nepal). Here are some of the differences among these species: M. simplicifolia is the least known of the three species, it grows up to 5 feet in height with each stem holding a single flower, which is smaller than flowers of the other two species. M. Betenoifolia is the most common of the three (easiest to grow, more suitable to drier climates), grows 3 to 5 feet high and gets stems that can hold up to 5 flowers each. M. Grandis is the shortest, usually growing to a height of 2 feet, but its stems can handle up to 5 flowers. And the flowers are much bigger than in M. Betonicifolia.

Interestingly, Poppies International classifies M. Betonicifolia as "Himalayan Blue Poppy" and M. Grandis as "Tibetan Blue Poppy." I wonder about the basis/origin of these two common names. I wonder if the two Tibetan names Tsher-sNgon and Utpal sNgon-po can be separated for Himalayan Blue Poppy and Tibetan Blue Poppy. I don't now.

So Blue Poppy is mostly found on south and eastern parts of the Tibetan Plateau. Clearly this flower of high Asia requires cooler and moist soil to grow. If you are interested in growing "the most alluring" Utpal Ngonpo, The Garden of Eden blog has a few posts which might be a good introduction. This post suggests ways of growing from seed, and this has information about planting and growing Blue Poppy. Here is an interesting tip from Garden of Eden, the depth or shade of blue color of Tibetan poppies depends on soil pH level, just like hydrangeas. For those interested in more factual information, this is the best site I found.

Some myth busters: Blue Poppies do not produce the drug, opium. Sorry guys! Not all poppies are narcotic. And although Blue Poppies are used in Tibetan medicine, they have no scientifically proven medicinal value. Apparently there are all kinds of products and services marketed around myths surrounding the flower, the Himalayas, and Tibet. This site has some hilarious stories about this topic.