Poppy

Where it grows

The common red field poppy is a weed of disturbed soil — ploughed fields, building sites, road verges, and battlefields — across Europe, North Africa, and western Asia. Its seeds remain viable in the soil for over eighty years and germinate when the ground is freshly turned, which is why poppies bloomed across the churned earth of Flanders Fields.

How to recognise it

A slender hairy annual thirty to ninety centimetres tall with finely divided grey-green leaves clasping branching stems. Solitary nodding flower buds open into single bowls of four overlapping crinkled scarlet petals, often with a dark blotch at the base. Each flower lasts only a day or two; the urn-shaped seedpod that follows shakes thousands of tiny seeds.

Garden & cultural uses

The opium poppy, P. somniferum, is a separate species cultivated for both culinary seed and the latex used to produce morphine and codeine. Iceland and Oriental poppies (P. nudicaule and P. orientale) are the showy perennials of late-spring gardens.

In symbolism

Inspired by John McCrae’s 1915 poem In Flanders Fields, paper poppies sold every November fund veterans’ charities across Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.