I just found this on a site that shows photos of all the species of Meconopsis: "It is hoped that in the future people visiting these remote areas will concentrate on taking photographs of the critical features and a wide range of plants, not just the prettiest." What a good idea for our wiki pictures!. Of course, one needs to be knowledgeable to know which characteristics are important for identification. I can remember our experts in South Africa digging up a plant to check its bulb so they could name it for us. Of course, they carefully replanted it. That isn't often necessary, but sometimes the important parts are very unexpected. Does this stick out longer than that? How do the leaves emerge from the ground? What is the shape of the tiny stem holding the pollen up? And the instruction to take pictures of the variations present is important, too. I have so many gorgeous pictures stuck in my head - single pictures that were published in books, sometimes fifty years ago. They became my ideal of what many species should be, but when I have bought the plants or grown seeds, invariably they would not look much like those photos. Off-white instead of gleaming yellow, perfectly plain instead of white with a big purple eye, and so on. Then I noticed that the University of British Columbia Asian Garden was growing a lot of what I considered second-rate selections of rhododendrons, unlike the Species Foundation which combed the U.K. to import only rhododendrons which had won prizes. However, as a nature lover, as opposed to being a gardener who has room for only one of any species, I finally understood the importance of growing many representatives of the great diversity present in the wild. UBC chose a few species and is growing as many of them as possible so they can be studied. If you are in a strange area and don't know the plants, I guess the best thing to do is to take LOTS of photos of every aspect of the plant, not just the flower. Fortunately, with digital cameras, that is possible at very little expense. Diane Whitehead Victoria. B.C., Canada