“That we find…a poppy beautiful means that we are less alone, that we are more deeply inserted into existence than the course of a single life would lead us to believe.”—John Berger
One of the small pleasures in the early morning garden is to watch the delicate, crinkled petals of a poppy blossom push off the loosened sepals, the bud coverings, and slowly unfurl. The poppy family, Papaveraceae, contains some of the most exquisite flowers in the garden and in the wild.
The perennial Papaver orientale, the Oriental poppy, is a well-known bloom in the June garden. For a few weeks, the large flowers are a huge presence, especially the brilliant orange-red with black splotches, which originated in Anatolia. Cultivars have been developed in a range of colors. ‘Perry’s White’ has the contrast of white and black. ‘Patty’s Plum’ is a recent addition, with a dusky purple bloom. After flowering, the Oriental poppy foliage dries up and disappears until new growth appears in the fall.
Papaver atlanticum, the Moroccan poppy, is also a perennial, but it is a much smaller plant. It sends up multiple hairy stems topped with delicate, soft, orange blooms from spring until frost. By late summer, the plants start to look scraggly and can be cut back to develop new growth. In the wild, these poppies grow in rock crevices in the mountains of Morocco. Here, they re-seed prolifically, along stone pathways. A double flowered variety, ‘Flore Pleno,’ is also available, but I prefer the single blooms.
One would think that the Iceland poppy, P. nudicaule, would be extremely hardy since it survives in Iceland. But our wet winters cause the plants to rot. What is sold as the Iceland poppy is a cross of species. The true P. nudicaule is a yellow flowered plant from Siberia and Mongolia. Plants have been developed to produce delicious colors in a range of whites, corals, yellows, reds, and oranges, as in the strain ‘Champagne Bubbles.’
“In Flanders fields the poppies blow / between the crosses, row on row,”—John McCrae
The annual poppy P. rhoeas, known as the field poppy, corn poppy, or Flanders poppy, a reminder of World War I, grows wild in Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia, though its range has been reduced by the use of herbicides. Preserved flowers have been found in Egyptian tombs dating back to 1100 BC. The wild form produces brilliant scarlet blooms, which emerge from nodding buds. The seed can lie dormant for years and germinate after the soil is disturbed, which is what happened on battlefields, hence the name Flanders poppy. The red of the wilding is exquisite, but the cultivars developed are equally beautiful. Reverend W. Wilkes, the vicar of Shirley in England, bred a strain of flowers in pastel hues, often with a white edge, which became known as Shirley poppies. Double-flowered varieties have blossoms that appear too heavy for their slender stems. A recently introduced double, ‘Pandora,’ produces a stunning mix of burgundy flowers.
Another annual, P. somniferum, the opium, breadseed, or lettuce poppy, has a long history in cultivation and in medicine. It has been grown since Neolithic times, and the Assyrian Herbal of 2000 BC refers to its use. The resin extracted from the seedpod of this poppy is the source of opium, morphine, and heroin. The Latin somniferum means sleep-producing. The iconic scene in the film, The Wizard of Oz, alludes to this poppy. “And now my beauties,” says the Wicked Witch, “poppies, poppies, poppies will put them to sleep.” The opium poppy has sinister associations with drug addiction, but it is a magnificent plant in the garden. The celadon green leaves of young plants send up stalks with nodding buds that straighten just before the flowers open. Blooms vary from white, pink, red, and purple. ‘Lauren’s Grape’ is a rich purple like Welch’s grape juice. ‘Sissinghurst White’ is pristine. Mophead double varieties are sold as peony-flowered poppies. After flowering, the plants of P. somniferum quickly become very shabby with browning, raggedy foliage. Yet the seedpods are handsome, like little chalices, and filled with thousands of poppy seeds, the same as the seeds that are used on bagels or in cakes. If tipped over, the seeds will spill out when mature, and they will wait to germinate until next year. Both opium and Flanders poppies will reseed and return year after year if they don’t get too wet, are not smothered in mulch, and are not weeded away as tiny plants.
“Carrying a poppy he passes through the quarrel.” — Kobayashi Issa
There are plants in the poppy family without the Papaver name. The most familiar is the California poppy, Eschscholzia californica, the golden gem of the West Coast. The ferny blue green foliage and yellow orange blooms are named after physician and naturalist Dr. J. F. Eschscholz. A wide selection of cultivars is available in single and double flowers, including ‘Thai Silk,’ ‘Milky White,’ and ‘Jelly Beans.’
The blue Himalayan poppies of Tibet and China are notoriously temperamental plants lusted after by many gardeners, but they will only flourish if conditions are right. I have seen them in bloom at North Hill in Readsboro, Vermont, and at Lismore Castle in Ireland. They are grown successfully in the Pacific Northwest and in Canada. Edinburgh, Scotland has declared the variety ‘Lingholm’ as its official flower. Meconopsis betonifolia and M. grandis are the two plants from the wild that have been used to develop cultivars. The name is from the Greek ‘mekon’ (poppy) and ‘opsis’ (like). Frank Kingdon-Ward, the plant explorer who introduced the blue poppies to England, said, “the flowers flutter out from amongst the sea-green leaves, like blue and gold butterflies…incredibly blue-petaled flowers, in a wad of golden anthers in the centre.”
Two other plants in the family of poppies are Stylophorum diphyllum, the native Celandine, and Macleaya, the plume poppy. The woodland Celandine does appear poppy-like with hairy stems and yellow blooms. The plume poppy, however, is unrecognizable as a poppy. The eight-foot tall perennial with handsome lobed foliage and subtle buff coloring has tiny flowers in feathery panicles.
Papaveraceae, the poppy family, contains a trove of bold, delicate flowers for the garden. Yet to see them in the wild, seeded by themselves, often in masses, is magical. I have seen the hillsides of California golden with poppies and the roadsides of France dotted in red. Something I will only see in photographs are the slopes of the Himalayas covered in blue and gold, images of the beauty of our planet.
May 2019