LXXXVI.— THE CORN POPPY. 
Papaver Rhceas Linne. 
A lthough they have long pod-like fruits dehiscing by valves and only two 
stigmas, the Greater Celandine and the Horned Poppy were recognised at an 
early date in the history of botanical science as unquestionably related to the Poppies. 
The Family Papaverace^e is, in fact, a well-defined natural group, especially if we 
consider it apart from the aberrant Sub-Family Fumarioideie. The milky latex with 
its narcotic properties, the large flowers, generally nodding in the bud stage, the two 
caducous sepals, the four crumpled petals, and the many stamens serve clearly to 
indicate the affinity of its members. Those in which there is a more or less globular 
capsule, with four or more stigmas radiating from the centre of its upper surface, 
and dehiscing by pores round its upper edge, are still more obviously closely 
related, and were long all classed together in the genus Papaver. This is now 
restricted to those species, about forty in number, in which there is no trace of a 
style, so that the stigmatic lobes radiate on a flattish disk. 
The origin of the name Papaver, which occurs in Pliny, and is undoubtedly the 
etymon alike of the French pavot and of our own poppy, is obscure ; but it is 
probably connected with the Celtic papa, meaning “ thick milk,” either with 
reference to the latex in these plants or to their medicinal use — which is undoubtedly 
very ancient — as a mild narcotic administered in pap to induce sleep. A poppy 
allied to the Opium Poppy was cultivated during the Later Stone Age, its fruits and 
seeds being found in the Swiss lake-dwellings of that period ; and some species 
was known as a cultivated plant to Homer, to Theophrastus, the pupil of Aristotle, 
and to Dioscorides. The latter author mentions both the seeds, which were used 
as a bread-stuff, and the opium, the Greek otto?, opos, obtained from the milky juice 
of the capsules. Probably, however, opium was then eaten, as it is now in Persia 
and India, the practice of smoking it having apparently only been introduced into 
China from Assam about the middle of the eighteenth century. 
With outlying species in South Africa and Australia, the genus Papaver belongs 
mainly to the Temperate regions of Asia and Europe, perhaps originally to the 
Warmer Temperate Zone. The species are all annuals and are apt to suffer from 
frost, while they rejoice especially in sunny places, cultivated ground, and dry 
sub-soils. Throughout Europe they appear as weeds in cornfields and other arable 
land ; and Cosson states that P. Rhceas Linn6 appears truly indigenous in Algeria, but 
has probably been introduced with seed corn into Europe, perhaps during the rule 
of the Roman Empire. This species is also said to grow on hill-sides in the Caucasus 
about Baku, and in similar situations in Sicily, which was, as is pointed out by De 
Candolle, one of the first countries in which the Graeco-Latin races cultivated cereals 
and was for ages one of the chief granaries of Rome. Troublesome weed as it 
is, the plant was thus appropriately dedicated to Ceres, while its rose-like form of 
