23b poppy. 



Description. The root is annual, fusiform, yellowish white, 

 branching,, and fibrous. The stem is erect, cylindrical, glau- 

 cous green, smooth below, sometimes with a few scattered, ex- 

 panded hairs towards the summit. The leaves are large, wavy, 

 alternate, sessile, amplexicauf, incised, unequally toothed, gla- 

 brous on both sides, and of a pale, glaucous green colour. 

 The flowers are large, terminal, solitary, drooping in the bud. 

 The calyx is composed of two concave, glabrous, caducous 

 sepals. The corolla consists of four large, rounded, white 

 petals, usually marked at the base with a purple eye. The 

 stamens are very numerous, inserted on the receptacle, with 

 setaceous filaments dilated upwards, and oblong, obtuse, com- 

 pressed, erect anthers. The germen is globose, without a 

 style, crowned by a large radiating stigma, of eight, ten, or 

 more rays, with a thin, deflexed margin. The capsule is glo- 

 bose, or nearly so, large, glabrous, one-celled, divided half way 

 into spurious cells by the incomplete dissepiments to which the 

 seeds are attached, opening at the summit by apertures beneath 

 the stigma. The seeds are very numerous, reniform, small, 

 whitish. Plate 39, fig. 1, (a) stamens and pistil; (6) single 

 stamen ; (c) capsule ; (d) the same cut transversely ; (e) seed, 

 magnified ; (f) longitudinal section of the same to shew the 

 embryo. 



White Poppy is supposed to have been originally a native of 

 Asia, whence it has been conveyed to the south of Europe and to 

 England, where it is sometimes found apparently wild. It 

 flowers in July. 



The Latin name Papaver is thought to be derived from the 

 Celtic papa, pap, the soft food given to children, in which the 

 seeds were formerly boiled to induce sleep. The plant is deno- 

 minated pwuv in the Greek writings. Opium is so called from 

 ottos*, juice,— the juice, par excellence. Gerard states that the 

 garden poppy is sometimes called cheese-bowls. 



The poppy appears to have been cultivated many years prior 

 to the era of Hippocrates, most probably for the sake of its 

 edible seeds "f, as we find scarcely any mention of its narcotic 



* Hence, also, most of the oriental names of opium. In India, Egypt, 

 and Arabia, it was called affion ; by the Persians afiuun ; by the Moors 

 affiun, and the modern Turks call it affioni. 



f Hence Virgil calls it "vescum papaver" and " Cereale papaver," 



