POPPY FAMILY 



These were the work of the Rev. W. Wilks, secretary of the 



Royal Horticuhural Society, who gives the following account of 



•the development of these poppies in "The Garden," vol. LVII. 



He says: "In 1880 I noticed in a waste comer of my garden, 

 abutting on the fields, a patch of the common, wild, field poppy 

 Papaver rhcms, one solitary flower of which had a very narrow 

 edge of white. This one flower I marked, and saved the seed of 

 it alone. Next year, out of perhaps two hundred plants, I had 

 four or five on which all the flowers were edged. The best of 

 these were marked and the seed saved, and so on for several years, 

 the flowers all the while getting a larger infusion of white to tone 

 down the red, until they arrived at quite pale-pink, and one plant 

 absolutely pure-white. I then set myself to change the black 

 central portions of the flowers from black to yellow or white, 

 and at last fixed a strain with petals varying in color from the 

 brightest scarlet to pure-white, with all shades of pink between 

 and all varieties of flakes and edged flowers also, but all having 

 yellow or white stamens and a white base." 



The marked characteristics of Shirley Poppies are four: They 

 are always single, always have a white base, stamens are yellow 

 or white, and there is never the smallest particle of black about 

 them. Double Poppies and Poppies with black centres are beau- 

 tiful, but they are not of the Shirley strain. It is the absence of 

 black blood that gives the Shirleys their wonderfully light, silken, 

 papery texture. 



ICELAND POPPY 



Papaver nudicaAle. 



Stem. — Slender, leafless. 



Z,ea7;ei.— Radical, rough-hairy, obovate in outline, deeply pinnatifid 

 growing in tufts. r- ^ r- , 



Flowers —Yellow or orange, solitary; on a hairy scape, six to twelve 

 inches high. 



Sepals.~Two, which drop as the flower opens. 

 Capsule.— Long, slender, hairy. 



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