POPPY 221 



POPPY (Papaver Rhoeas) 



The Poppy is very much in evidence on our railway 

 embankments and waste ground, but more notably yet 

 amongst the farmer's corn and other crops. Beautiful 

 as it is, it can only by severe utilitarians be denounced, 

 we are afraid, as a noxious weed.' The same may be 

 said of the charlock that clothes the arable lands with 

 a rich mass of yellow, to the delight of the artist and 

 the disgust of the farmer. At the same time some little 

 cleansing of the land is possible, and to see a field one 

 glorious sheet of scarlet or of gold is not an indication 

 of good farming. 



Why a poppy should be so called does not appear. 

 We must not forget that no names come fortuitously ; 

 all have a significance, but, naturally, by lapse of time 

 this original significance is sometimes lost to us. It was 

 said, somewhat severely, of a certain book that was 

 regarded as a classic, that, as it was now never read, 

 its position in our literature was assured, and the poppy, 

 having been so called for centuries, will doubtless still 

 be a poppy in popular nomenclature for centuries more, 

 no one knowing or caring why. In Anglo-Saxon days 

 it was the fopig. It is by some old authors called the 

 corn-rose, a name admirably descriptive of its favourite 

 habitat, but entirely wanting in point as suggesting any 

 sort of comparison in growth, form, colour, or anything 



' Poppies nodding mock the hope of toil. 



Crabbe. 

 Where the dark poppy flourish'd on the dry 

 And sterile soil, and mock'd the thin-set rye. 



Crabbe. 



