COMMON RED POPPY 95 



Common Red Poppy (Papaver Rhceas, L.) 



Unlike the Opium Poppy and Long Rough-headed Poppy, both 

 of which appear in Neolithic beds (when they were cultivated), this 

 species is not found so early. 



It is found in Europe, N. Africa, W. Asia as far as India. It is 

 found in 106 vice-counties of Great Britain, but not in Cardigan. 

 Mid Lanes, Cumberland, Dumfries, Kirkcudbright, Stirling, or Elgin. 

 It is rare north of the Tay; and occurs in Ireland and the Channel 

 Islands. Watson calls it a colonist. 



The Common Red Poppy which reddens, as though with blood- 

 drops, the golden grain in autumn, is a widely distributed plant which 

 has followed the plough, and comes up in every cornfield, and along 

 the railway-bank, where weeds are liable to accumulate, being blown 

 out of passing trucks or caught as by a barrier by the line of rail, and 

 in all waste places, and by roadsides. Where we find Shepherd's 

 Purse and the Golden Charlock, there also we shall find the Red 

 Poppy. 



This elegant plant, whose flowers are so fugacious or shortlived 

 (hence R/iosas) and tend to tumble so soon, is an erect plant, with 

 divided leaves, with many branches, which spread out in a nearly erect 

 manner. The leaves are deeply notched and deeply divided (1-2). 



The whole plant is thus pyramidal from below upwards. It grows 

 in clusters amid the corn, or more thickly when it is more erect and 

 less spreading, by the wayside. 



The flower is scarlet with a black spot at the base, and in bud 

 the flowers hang down but are erect afterwards. 



The capsule or fruit is smooth and rounded, and the flower-stalk 

 has spreading hairs. The filaments are awl-shaped, numerous, and 

 there is no style. The stigma is convex, with the lobes overlapping. 



In height this poppy reaches 2 ft., flowering from June to July. 

 It is an annual, the seeds falling out by the opening of pores in the 

 capsule beneath the stigma. 



The sepals fall off as the flower expands. The flower has 4 petals, 

 and many stamens closely surround the stigma and ripen before the 

 flower opens, and are covered with pollen. This covers the lobes of 

 the stigma which radiate from the centre of a circular disk on the top 

 ot the pistil, but the higher parts protrude, so that they are free from 

 pollen. There is no honey, but insects alight on the broad stigma 

 for pollen, and if another flower has been visited already cross-pollina- 



