M. grandis Betty Sherriff's Dream Poppy
Ambiguous. Fletcher in his book “A Quest of Flowers” tells the story of Betty Sherriff’s discovery in north-eastern Bhutan of a particularly good form of M. grandis (now M. gakyidiana) from which seed was subsequently collected and distributed. No plants are known which definitely derive from this collection and a number of very different plants were submitted to The Meconopsis Group Identification Trial purporting to be the “dream poppy”. Many of these have been ruled out as they do not have the characteristics of George Sherriff Group plants. Two rather different cultivars which do, both of which are known to have been given to their recipients by Betty Sherriff from the Ascreavie garden as her “dream poppy”, have subsequently been named M. ‘Barney’s Blue’ and M. ‘Susan’s Reward’. Both of these cultivars are infertile. It is uncertain that they derive from this particular seed collection and it is possible that they are garden hybrids.