POP PIES TO REMEMBER
These spirited blooms are easy to grow and full of winter cheer
For a century we’ve linked wild poppies with remembrance. But the buttonhole tokens we wear today are no substitute for the real flowers.
Their silky scarlet petals need morning sun to unfurl and they fall after only a day. But new buds open by the score every morning for weeks on end.
Annual poppies are miraculous. No one sowed them in the war-torn Flanders landscape, but they flowered in profusion. The seeds would have lain dormant for decades, triggered to sprout when the shelling exposed them to sunlight.
Poppies appeared in London bomb craters, too — emblems of regeneration. In our gardens, wild poppies often turn up from nowhere. Poppy seed germinates in any disturbed ground, given moisture and brief exposure to sunlight.
WILD TYPES
Some regard wild cornfield poppies as weeds. But they’re as beautiful and easily managed as garden annuals. If scarlet isn’t for you, alternatives include pink, fancy bicolours, lemon or even white.
You can cultivate other poppies, too — some will grow tall and even have off- season interest. Annual poppies can be seen in spring or autumn.
But, if you sow in both seasons, your plants will flower from early June to August. And if they are allowed to seed freely, there’ll be new generations every year.
The reverend Wilks — a 19thcentury clergyman gardener — once spotted a pink-flowered wild poppy. Using its seed, he developed the Shirley strain whose colours include pink, red and pale yellow, often with contrasting edges or picotees. Today, selected field poppy strains come in dusky lilac, deep maroon and even pearl-grey. There are mixed doubles, too, such as Angels Choir and Double Shirley. other species such as the blood-red mediterranean
Papaver apulum and blackspotted ladybird poppy, Papaver
commutatum, are also superb. The ephemeral nature of annual poppies makes them especially beautiful. But these are vagabond plants, seeding around and popping up in unexpected places.
For self- seeding, allow your plants to die before pulling them up and give each ‘ corpse’ a shake before composting.
NOT JUST RED
oPIUm poppies, Papaver
somniferum, are also annual but grow taller. Glaucous blue-grey foliage enhances their decorative value and the large seed capsules last well into winter.
There are plenty of named varieties, many with double flowers. Colours run from plummy crimson through pale lilac-mauve to bright pink.
Selected varieties can be superb. But over several generations, they may lose their pure colours. You can buy seed of excellent varieties such as maroon Cherry Glow and red and white Danebrog from nickys-nursery.co.uk. The perennial Welsh Poppy,
Meconopsis cambrica, thrives in gloom, both dry and moist. The flowers are held on thin 45cm stems and create long-lasting drifts of lemon yellow.
Welsh poppies have fragile roots and don’t transplant easily. Seed is the best way to start off your colony. Sow copiously. In the right conditions, they will come up in profusion. Though be warned, Welsh poppy is an eager spreader.