M. 'Crarae' (Infertile Blue Group)
A very distinctive cultivar of garden origin with globular flowers which does best when given moist conditions.
MG Rating: ★★★★   
Named by: The Meconopsis Group, 2000. Registered by: The Meconopsis Group, 2002.
Flowering: May-June. Large cup-shaped nodding or semi-nodding globular flowers, mauve-blue or a clear sky-blue, with a prominent narrow style. The broadly overlapping petals are rounded to ovate.
Emerging foliage: The leaves emerge early and are suffused with a red-purple pigmentation.
Mature foliage: The pale green leaf blades are oblong-elliptic on long arching petioles. They are very shallowly and remotely toothed in their margins and have a prominent white midrib. The leaf base is attenuate and the apex sub-obtuse.
Fruit capsule: Narrowly ellipsoid and covered with straw-coloured bristles. Long narrow style with a prominent stigma. Infertile.
Etymology: This cultivar was named after the garden at Crarae, Argyll where it grew in large drifts in 1997. It was also grown at Kilbryde Castle near Dunblane.