DESCRIPTIVE LIST OF FLOWERS. 309 



Poppies makes a grand show. All the varieties are easily 

 cultivated from seed. None of them can be transplanted 

 with success. 



P, Rhaeas, Corn Poppy or African Rose A common 

 weed, among grain on gravelly soils, in England ; but, in 

 its double and semi-double varieties, it is one of the hand- 

 somest of garden annuals, sporting into different varieties 

 of scarlet, crimson, purple, pink, white, variegated, and 

 parti-colored flowers, continuing all summer in bloom. 

 The odor of the flower renders it unpopular. The flow- 

 ers are exceeding beautiful and delicate. The single va- 

 riety of the common kind is of a bright scarlet, with a 

 deep purple eye in the center, which the poet supposes to 

 be upon the look-out for Ceres : 



" And the Poppies red, 

 On their wistful bed, 

 Turn up their dark-blue eyes to thee." 



P. orientalis. Oriental Poppy. This is a magnificent 

 perennial, worth all the rest of the Poppy tribe. Its 

 large, gorgeous, orange-scarlet flowers, display themselves 

 in the month of June. The bottoms of the petals are 

 black ; the stigma is surrounded with a multitude of rich 

 purple stamens, the anthers of which shed a profusion of 

 pollen, which powders over the stigma and the internal 

 part of the flower, giving it a very rich appearance. 



The flower-stems are rough, three feet high, each oue 

 bearing a single, solitary flower, five or six inches in di- 

 ameter. A clump, with twenty or thirty of these flowers, 

 makes one of the most conspicuous and showy ornaments 

 of the garden. Leaves are rough, pinnate, serrate. Prop- 

 agated by dividing the roots, which should be done as soon 

 as the foliage has died down in August, as it commences 

 growing again in September, and throws up leaves which 

 remain during winter, it being one of the most hardy 

 plants. If division be deferred until spring, if it blooms at 



