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| Photo Credit: Geral Klingaman |
| Field poppies are a beautiful spring annual for the garden. |
If there’s one indelible image of poppies, it’s the scene in The Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy is felled by the sleep inducers. The field of red poppies with the Emerald City in the background is absolutely breathtaking, but your heart sinks as the girl in the red ruby slippers falls to the ground. When Glinda awakens the Cowardly Lion and Dorothy with a sudden snowstorm, the poppies are nothing but a memory as the motley group races toward the city.
Of course, no one’s going to fall asleep while running through a gorgeous field of poppies in real life, but you might be inclined to stop to take in the beauty – a large group of poppies demands to be noticed! Widely distributed throughout Europe, field poppies grow about 2 feet tall and are topped with delicate, crepe-textured flowers 3-4 inches across. The blooms are held singly aloft on long, thin stems covered with short hairs. (The stems exude a milky sap when cut.) The leaves are deeply cut and mostly in a basal rosette or scattered up the branched stem to about half the height of the plant. Before opening, the solitary, olive-sized buds nod downward as they await their day in the sun. Flowers consist of two hairy sepals that fall away as the flowers open. Most field poppies have four petals, though double forms are available, too. And you can find a variety of colors. (There are more than 20 botanical varieties of the species.) The most common hue is a cheery bright red.
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