How three Canadian women helped save the rare Tibetan blue poppy | Canada Voices

This is a story about the rare Tibetan blue poppy, an eccentric British plant collector and three Canadian women who have each played a role in helping to save it.

It’s a tale that unfolds over a century, has many twists and turns and begins with Frank Kingdon-Ward, an Indiana Jones-like adventurer who, in 1924, set off from England to find the elusive blue poppy, which grows in the Himalayan mountains and was on the verge of extinction after years of being overharvested by medicine hunters.

It took him a year, but Mr. Kingdon-Ward eventually found a patch of the iridescent, sky-blue blossoms, more than 10,000 feet up the Tsangpo Gorge in Tibet. To retrieve samples, the determined botanist reportedly swung across the gorge – the deepest in the world – on a cable made of twisted bamboo.

When the blue poppy made its debut in 1926 at the prestigious Chelsea Flower Show in London, it caused a media sensation, sparking a frenzy among gardeners who wanted its coveted seeds.

Jennie Butchart, from Victoria, and Elsie Reford, of Grand-Métis, Que., were among that group of gung-ho gardeners who were captivated by the plant’s unusual colour (rare in nature), ethereal beauty and reputation for being notoriously tricky to grow. (It likes cool summers; cold, dry winters; shade; no wind; no humidity; and well-draining soil, among other things).

“At the time, the blue poppy was a superstar, an ingenue that came out of nowhere,” explains Alexander Reford, great grandson of Elsie. “Gardeners are always looking for novelty items and they like a challenge. It’s not surprising that both these women, who were horticultural pioneers, wanted to see if they could grow it, too.”

Mrs. Butchart, who created the famed Butchart Gardens on Vancouver Island, was the first gardener in Canada to secure seeds from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. A few years later, Elsie, the driving force behind Les Jardins De Métis/Reford Gardens in the Gaspé, received hers.

“Here they were, two stubborn, self-taught gardeners working on opposite sides of the country, in climates and ecosystems that could not be more different,” says Alexander, director of Les Jardins de Métis since 1995. “However, they both succeeded in growing this beautiful flower, and not only that, harvested its seeds so that other gardeners could try to grow the blue poppy in their gardens, too.”

As Daphne Gardner, archivist of the Butchart Gardens notes: “People love the blue poppy. I think a lot of people can’t grow them so when they see them in great abundance, they are in awe. I’ve never been able to grow it, for example. And I have tried in lots of different places in my garden.”

Now, 100 years later, the award-winning digital artist T.M. Glass has felt the tug of the blue poppy, too. She has spent the past few years photographing the plant – it’s delicate crepelike petals, golden stamens and central ovary – from every possible angle.

Using those images as templates and inspiration, the Toronto-based Ms. Glass then hand-painted the flower in various stages of growth to create vibrant works of art for an exhibition called Saving the Blue Poppy from Extinction, A Centennial Celebration, which runs until Oct. 5 at Les Jardins de Métis/Reford Gardens.

“My intent for this exhibition is not only to shine a light on this beautiful and endangered flower, but to shine a light on all the people around the world who have come together over the years to save its existence,” says Ms. Glass, also an avid gardener who, despite her best efforts, has not been able to get the fussy blue poppy to grow. “I think it’s too humid in Toronto,” she says. Depending on where you live in Canada, the blue poppy typically blooms from mid-June to the end of July.

“Everyone has a different idea of what makes the blue poppy special. For me, its colour is exceedingly mesmerizing. I should say colours, because in the petals I see about 20 shades of blue.”

Its physical beauty and rarity aside, Ms. Glass says there is a mystical quality to the plant that sets it apart from many other species in the botanical world. “I see the flower as a powerful metaphor symbolizing our world’s fragile ecosystem,” the artist says. “When you look around at all the endangered things that need saving – bees, water, forests, the list goes on – the blue poppy stands for the good that can happen when people care about the natural world and do something to nurture and protect it.”

In Tibetan Buddhism, the blue poppy is revered as a symbol of the unattainable or a spiritual path that requires dedication and perseverance. Alexander Reford says this analogy is fitting today given that the plant is once again under threat – this time from climate change.

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According to a new study by scientists from China’s Kunming Institute of Botany, the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and Columbus State University in the U.S., several species of the Himalayan blue poppy (Meconopsis betonicifolia) could soon be threatened in their native habitat as climate change pushes them to ever smaller mountain sanctuaries. Within 50 years, the study predicts, the Tibetan blue poppy could be teetering on the brink of extinction in the wild.

There is, however, a Canadian-made silver lining. Because both Elsie Reford and Jennie Butchart got their blue poppy seeds more than a century ago – most likely from Kingdon-Ward’s original batch – they may have progeny, direct from Tibet.

“We have DNA evidence to suggest that our blue poppies were the direct children of those original ones,” says Alexander. “So, in the event there is a catastrophic climate event in that part of the world, we have a living seed bank that we could share, ensuring that this beautiful flower survives into the next century and beyond.”