poppy - Symbolism, Gallery

The name given to many members of the family Papaveraceae. All produce latex, are often brightly coloured, and have flowers with two sepals and four overlapping petals, often crumpled when they first open. Red poppies, which grew wild in the fields of Flanders, are used in November as a symbol of remembrance of those who died in the two World Wars.

For other uses, see Poppy (disambiguation).

A poppy is any of a number of showy flowers, borne one per stem, belonging to the poppy family.

There are white, pink, yellow, orange, red and blue poppies;

Poppies may be found in the genera:

Meconopsis (Himalayan poppy, Welsh poppy and relatives) Papaver (Iceland poppy, Oriental poppy, Opium poppy, corn poppy and about 120 other species) Romneya (Matilija poppy and relatives) Eschscholzia (California poppy and relatives)

The pollen of the oriental poppy, Papaver orientale, is dark blue. The pollen of the field poppy or corn poppy (Papaver rhoeas) is dark blue to grey.

The opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, is grown for opium, opiates or seeds to be used in cooking and baking, eg.

Symbolism

The poppy of wartime remembrance is the red corn poppy, Papaver rhoeas.

Poppies are used as emblems on tombstones to symbolize eternal sleep.

The golden poppy, Eschscholzia californica, is the state flower of California. This means that eating foods (e.g., muffins) that contain poppy seeds can result in a false positive for opiates in a drug test.

The results of this experiment are inconclusive by current standards, because a test was used with an opiate cutoff level of 300 ng/mL instead of the current SAMHSA recommended cutoff level used in the NIDA 5 test, which was raised from 300 ng/mL to 2,000 ng/mL in 1998 in order to avoid false positives from poppy seeds .

The sale of poppy seeds from Papaver somniferum is banned in Singapore due to the morphine content.

Gallery

A poppy bud and plant	Poppies growing amongst organically grown broad beans on a UK allotment	Papaver rhoeas	Close up view of a poppy bloom (and buds in the background).
Field of poppies, from a photograph by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, taken ca.	Another field of poppies, taken in Erlangen/Germany in 2005.	Closeup of a poppy flower at the Monastery of Lorch (Baden-Württemberg), Germany.	Immature crowning Opium Poppy, top view
California Poppy	A wild field of poppies, above the Wye Valley/UK in June 2006.	Poppy seeds.