Thursday 14 July 2011

Plant of t'week

Check out these amazing poppies.



The foliage is exactly the same as that of the Opium Poppy, but I've never seen one with a pink and purple flower before (and look at all that fringing on the petals), so I'm guessing it must be a cultivar.



So beautiful, and the bees were just loving them.


Papaver somniferum is the Opium Poppy's botanical name.  It means "sleep-bringing poppy", which refers to it's sedative properties. I would've been boiling the seed-heads up for a foul-tasting poppy brew at one time, but I'm better behaved nowadays.


2 comments:

  1. Never seen these before! I have some Shirley poppies coming along (the first time I've planted them) and they should be open in a few days. I really have no idea what they will look like.

    Yours have a lovely colour!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love your pictures. We had poppies that came up each year on the farm I grew up on, but they were never this color.

    ReplyDelete

I'd love your comments