THE POPPY. 



Papaver somniferum. 



O more interesting flower is to be 

 found in the garden than the 

 poppy, and a certain few kinds 

 are extravagantly beautiful, 

 though lamentably short-lived. 

 It is essentially a classic flower, 

 having from the most early times 

 had a place of honour on the 

 brow of the divine Ceres : for it 

 was not left for the people of 

 this century to discover that 

 poppies love to grow amongst 

 the corn. Our blazing red 

 poppy, that oftentimes, as we 

 hurry along through the sun- 

 shine in a railway train, spreads 

 abroad in sheets, and suggests 

 that we are riding through lakes of blood 

 or seas of fire, according as the light or the 

 fancy may glorify the common-place fact this scarlet poppy 

 (Papaver rhceas] is, in some respects, distinct from the classic 

 poppy, for it has an urn-shaped capsule, whereas the classic 

 poppy (P. somniferum}, which is the common field flower of 

 Greece, has a roundish capsule, and the flowers are as com- 

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